NEW YORK – A teen in New York doesn’t think having the Super Bowl on Sundays is practical, so he’s trying to change it.
Football fans must stay up pretty late on Sunday to watch the game and it makes it hard to get up for school and work the next day, says 16-year-old Frankie Ruggeri.
“Why not have a kid say, ‘How about the Super Bowl be on a Saturday?” the high school junior told CNN on Tuesday.
The idea came up a week ago when the upstate New York family was talking about the playoffs over dinner. Frankie said it should be on a Saturday and he followed up by starting a petition on Change.org.
He’s asking people to get behind changing next year’s Super Bowl to a Saturday and people seem to be into it. Nearly 40,000 people have signed the petition, as of Friday evening.
Frankie argues that more people will watch, the NFL will get more money and more people would travel to the game if it were on a Saturday.
Historically, professional football games have always been on Sundays. You can thank Congress for that.
In 1961, Congress passed the Sports Broadcasting Act. The law helped set the NFL broadcasting schedule for Sundays to protect the fans of college and high school football.
The law barred the broadcasting of professional games played on Fridays and Saturdays during the schools’ seasons. The Super Bowl is well after the school football season, though.
Frankie hopes NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell will change his mind.
CNN reached out to the NFL for comment. In the past, the NFL has said viewership is stronger on Sunday evenings.
When Frankie gets an idea into his head, his dad said, he follows thorough.
“He has a lot of passion in his heart,” his dad, Frank Ruggeri said. “When he gets on one thing, he really sticks with it.”
Frankie started researching statistics to make his Super Bowl Saturday case stronger. He learned some compelling things.
In 2019, a survey found more than 17 million US employees may miss work the day after the Super Bowl LII, according to The Workforce Institute.
There’s a 41% increase in automobile accidents in the aftermath of the Super Bowl, according to a 2003 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The study looked at Super Bowls from 1975 to 2001.
The Ruggeris will be at home watching the big game on February 2 — a Sunday — and Frankie insists that he will stay up to catch the action. He thinks the San Francisco 49ers are going to win, but his dad hopes it will be the Kansas City Chiefs.
Neither of his teams are playing, but Frankie loves to watch football. He’s a big Buffalo Bills and Los Angeles Rams fan.
When asked what his reaction has been to all the people signing his petition, Frankie’s response was priceless.
“Oh my gosh,” Frankie said. “It’s like if the Rams won the Super Bowl pretty much.”