It always irritates me when people deny the obvious. The day after the Super Bowl should be a national holiday, because it’s a unifying event across America and because we as Americans are bloated and hungover the day after the game and aren’t going to be even slightly useful at work anyway. It would be an incredibly popular political move, *hint hint* Congress who everyone hates, and economically, we really wouldn’t lose that much in productivity because, again, people aren’t coming into work at 100% anyway. Just move President’s Day. Be done with it.

But don’t stop there.

Because the second sporting national holiday that grips America is March Madness. I’m not going to be unreasonable and demand that all three weeks be treated equally. First and foremost, they aren’t equal. Many and perhaps even most of the games that determine the Elite Eight and Final Four are readily accessible to most people who work. But the opening weekend, a true tradition unlike any other, stunts audience participation by beginning—out of necessity—at noon on Thursday and Friday EST and even earlier CST and out West. So what have we done as Americans? We’ve come up with apps to let us watch at work instead of worry about that stupid project we’re supposed to be working on. It’s part of what makes us GREAT. So, just as with the day after the Super Bowl, businesses have a large portion of their workforce there and slacking off to the point where there is no reason not to just be a realist and say, “Screw it, see you Monday. Office pool brackets are due by 5PM Wednesday.”

I readily acknowledge that soulless corporations could care less about what their employees want and instead desire to suck every single waking hour out of their worker-drones lives. That’s why it’s up to someone else, a public official, to say “I hereby order you to let the people day drink and watch basketball and curse at their brackets for two measly days. Oh, you want to ensure that every moment of their lives are devoted to PointlessCorp? Screw you. It’s not like you don’t have a TV in your office with the game on Mr./Ms. CEO. Let my people go to bars! Freedom!!!!!!!”

Or something like that. Have Aaron Sorkin draft you a speech. It’ll be good. The argument is two-fold: There is no point in dragging everyone to work and school and whatever else when an overwhelming segment of the population isn’t going to pay attention to it. Great companies want their employees to be productivity based, rather than robots. But not all companies are great, or even good and many are just purposefully intolerable. The Super Bowl and March Madness are the only two sporting events that everyone, non-sports fans, acknowledge and vaguely participate in. There’s a bigger constituency for these two events in America than any holiday other than Halloween, St. Patrick’s Day, 4th of July, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Probably for the same reason: they all involve eating too much food, wearing specific outfits, watching sports and drinking heavily. The fact that we don’t just fess up to who we are and what we celebrate and that, oh yeah, Americans work harder than anyone else in the industrialized world is dumb and a result of greed.

So today, I call on Congress to enact these sporting holidays as national holidays. Give the hardworking men and women of this great nation some time to enjoy what they truly love. Eating, drinking and watching sports.

Because, America.

Paid for by TJ Hatter for President 2032.