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Why the Super Bowl is on Sunday

Pro football is now inseparable from the seventh day. It wasn’t always so.

By Craig Harline

 |   

  February 05, 2012

Super Bowl Sunday is such a familiar part of the American cultural landscape that it might seem silly to ask how the Super Bowl — and professional football in general — ever came to be played on Sunday in the first place. But rewind the clock far enough, and the juxtaposition would be shocking. To the Puritans who helped found the nation, Sunday was the Sabbath (divinely transferred from Saturday). In their minds, the Sabbath’s prohibition on work extended to play as well.

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