Shucks, I forgot to miss the Super Bowl on purpose. I just forgot about it, period. Outside at dusk on Sunday I caught a nice view of the near-full moon over bare trees, though.

Pleasant to see, not so pleasant to stand around outside to see it. But the days are getting longer, the very first harbinger of spring. Otherwise, no hint of that season yet. We’re in winter stasis.

Am I right in thinking that this year’s Super Bowl is later than usual? I couldn’t let a question like that go unanswered, not when the uber-almanac that is the Internet is available.

This year is in fact the latest ever, and a major jump further into the new year from last year’s February 7. In fact, any game in February is historically late. Back in the early days of the contest, mid-January was more likely, and January was the norm for the 20th-century games. The earliest the Super Bowl has ever been was January 9, 1977.

According to this handy table from ESPN, the first February Super Bowl was only in 2002, when it was on the 3rd.

That season the league’s schedule was pushed back a week by the September 11, 2001 attacks. Wiki puts it this way: “Rescheduling Super Bowl XXXVI from January 27 to February 3 [2002] proved extraordinarily difficult. In addition to rescheduling the game itself, all related events and activities had to be accommodated.

“This marked the first time in NFL history that the Super Bowl was played in February; all subsequent Super Bowls (excluding Super Bowl XXXVII in 2003) after that have been played in February.”

The games from 2004 to 2021 were played on the first Sunday in February, after which the NFL expanded its season from 16 to 17 regular season games. So this year’s became the first to be played on the second Sunday of the month, which looks to be the schedule for the foreseeable future.

Nice to know, I guess. Maybe someday it’ll drift into early spring. I don’t think I’ll be watching, whatever day it is.