This is the real State of the Union: An estimated 85 million Americans voted in November’s midterm elections; next week’s annual National Football Lollapalooza is expected to draw a U.S. viewing audience almost double that, roughly 140 million. In North Carolina, four men are collecting signatures for a petition that would seek national-holiday status for the Super Bowl.

That official day off would be observed on a Monday, in the grand American tradition of the three-day weekend – and in recognition of the debilitating Sunday excess of unhealthy food, strong beverage, televised sporting violence, relentless commercialism and not a small amount of gambling. No need to call in sick if the office is closed.

By Friday, 7,401 “yes” votes had been cast at the SuperBowlMonday.com Web site in favor of a day-after Super Bowl holiday observation. (There were 268 “no” votes.) This self-proclaimed “grass-roots political campaign,” begun shortly before the 2006 Super Bowl, is “serious,” said SuperBowlMonday creator Robert Chute, 40, of suburban Charlotte, generating “hundreds of thousands of hits a day.”

The goal, he said, is to present 50,000 signatures to North Carolina congresswoman Sue Myrick. “If not this year, maybe next year or the one after,” Chute said. He and his SBM partners, brother Eric Chute and friends Marc Kinley and Rhys Lewis, contend that Super Bowl Sunday is “not just an ordinary day in America,” that it has “gained a significance that transcends the game itself,” that it is a “shared national event.”

It could be argued that this is an idea whose time came quite awhile ago. “It already is a secular holiday,” University of Indianapolis marketing professor Larry DeGaris said. “And since it’s on a Sunday, everybody gets the day off, anyway.”

DeGaris, who has a master’s degree in sports sociology, agreed that the Super Bowl, as an event, “has outpaced the football game by far. It’s a celebration of American consumerism, a celebration of television commercialism and consumption.

“It’s also,” he said, “a big part of community, a time when people get together with friends. It’s really the only national event we have left.”

When Jack Ludwig, then a professor of English at Stony Brook University, wrote his 1976 book, “The Great American Spectaculars; The Kentucky Derby, Mardis Gras and Other Days of Celebration,” his examination of such happenings included the Indianapolis 500, national political conventions and the Rose Bowl game and parade – not the Super Bowl.

Ludwig contended that the Super Bowl more closely resembled the World Series, Stanley Cup Finals and NBA championship because, though “the nature and stature of the participating teams was very important. … Were two mediocre teams by some fluke able to sneak into these sporting finals, interest would fall off drastically.”

That was 31 years ago. Overwhelming evidence is that the Super Bowl, once it abandoned more than a dozen years of early-afternoon kickoffs and settled into (East Coast) prime-time TV coverage in the early 1980s, quickly evolved into the very definition Ludwig gave to great American spectaculars: Far beyond the mere contest and specific contestants, its “special date” has worked its way onto “all kinds of calendars – social, sporting and political.”

SuperBowlMonday.com’s statistical research, which Robert Chute said was culled from countless submissions and Internet browsings, indicates that Super Bowl plans are made, on the average, 41 days in advance of the big game, as opposed to a 35-day advance for New Year’s plans and 30 days for anniversary plans. Early each autumn, Newsday’s sports department begins fielding telephone calls requesting the upcoming Super Bowl date, so that personal and public schedules — board meetings, children’s concerts, etc. – can be structured around the game. Chute’s group contends there is no slower weekend for weddings than Super Bowl Weekend.

Furthermore, what Ludwig described in making the Kentucky Derby a cultural touchstone more than 30 years ago clearly applies to the 21st-century Super Bowl – an “exploitation that works both ways: Everyone who used to pep up his or her recognition factor was also giving added publicity and exposure.”

Marketing executives, not sure if Super Bowl ads are worth the $2.6-million cost for 30 seconds of air time, nevertheless can’t resist being part of the highest TV ratings available. A similiar need to shout from the highest mountain has motivated a still-anonymous West Coast man to solicit donations and hire public relations and advertising firms so he can issue an in-game marriage proposal next week – what he is calling “the most public declaration of love in the history of mankind.”

Whether viewers out there (possibly including his intended) happen to view that as crass or uplifting, it will further boost the Super Bowl brand. In the words of singer John Mellencamp, “Ain’t that America?”

“The success of the Super Bowl,” DeGaris said, “is its ability to deliver an audience in excess of football fans. Maybe 40 years ago, people here in Indianapolis would tell you that was what the Indy 500 was; it transcended auto racing.”

So while the Super Bowl exists as a multibillion-dollar exercise in self-indulgence, it is a chunk of Americana on several levels. It is a party, a feast, a common denominator. “It’s a typical winter holiday for people,” DeGaris said. “And it’s inclusive. At a time when there’s even a big furor over Christmas, because not everybody celebrates Christmas, this really is a national event.”