February 9, 2024 – Puppy Bowl

The Super Bowl is this weekend, but if football isn’t your thing, you’re in luck. Because Sunday is also the annual Puppy Bowl! Instead of watching the 49ers take on the Chiefs, you can watch puppies on Team Fluff and Team Ruff to see who will win the coveted Lombarky Trophy. Each team is made up of shelter dogs, and the program is designed to raise awareness about adopting pets.
The first Puppy Bowl aired on February 6, 2005, opposite Super Bowl XXXIX. According to the show’s producers, the inspiration for the Puppy Bowl came from the popular Christmas Yule Log broadcast. During a meeting with Animal Planet executives, it was half-jokingly suggested that the best counterprogramming for the Super Bowl would be to just point a camera at puppies on a football field – a sort of dog version of the burning yule log that’s televised every holiday season. Puppy Bowl I attracted 5.8 million viewers and a new annual tradition was born.
There are several months of preplanning before each show, which is usually shot in October. The reason it’s shot months in advance is because about 53 hours of video needs to be edited to produce a single Puppy Bowl. A veterinarian is on site to ensure the puppy’s safety and well-being. Representatives from the ASPCA and the shelters that lend their animals to the production are also on hand as observers. Puppies are given rest breaks every half an hour because of the heat of the lights and all the action on the field.
The Puppy Bowl is shot inside a plexiglass stadium that’s 19 feet long by 10 feet wide. Puppies must be between 12 and 21 weeks old to be on the show, and there are height and weight limits because of the size of the playing area. Around 80 ounces of peanut butter, 15 pounds of dry dog food, 500 dog treats, and 250 toys are used for the tapings.
2015’s Puppy Bowl introduced the team competition. Puppies were broken up into Team Ruff and Team Fluff, identifiable by the color of bandanas they wore. The rules of the Puppy Bowl are pretty loose. If a puppy drags one of the multiple on-field toys across either end zone, their team scores a point. The team with the most points wins the Lombarky trophy.
A human “rufferee” supervises and makes rulings like “unnecessary rrruffness”, “ruff sides”, and “dog collar tackle”. He also calls penalties like “howling”, “illegal bathing”, “napping on the field”, “excessive fertilization”, and “neutral bone infraction”.
This year’s Puppy Bowl is the biggest yet, with 131 puppies from 73 shelters and rescues across 36 states and territories. The game will feature the smallest ever puppy – 1.7 lb Sweetpea – and the largest, Levi the Great Dane who is 70 lbs. The Puppy Bowl airs at 2 p.m. Super Bowl Sunday on Animal Planet, and you can also stream it on Max. Learn more here.