Much of the conversation regarding an inevitable 18th regular-season game centers on the fact that it would put the Super Bowl on the day before President’s Day.
Sometimes, however, the Super Bowl to end an 18-game season would overshoot the three-day weekend.
The headline of the Sports Business Journal blurb was that, on Wednesday, the Daytona International Speedway announced that the 2027 Daytona 500 will happen on February 21. That’s because the Super Bowl will be played a week earlier, on February 14. Which lands, for 2027, on President’s Day weekend.
Under the current 17-game, one-bye, post-Labor Day format, it will happen again in 2038, 2044, 2049, and 2055. (MDS did the deep calendar dive a few years ago, when the season expanded to 17 games.)
Of course, the season will expand to 18 games (at least) by 2038. Which will, in an 18-game, one-bye scenario, result in the Super Bowl overshooting President’s Day weekend.
And if there are two byes with 18 games, it will overshoot the three-day holiday weekend by two weeks.
At some point, the league may have to re-embrace another three-day weekend at the other end of the season: Labor Day.
