\n<\/p>\n
It\u2019s frowned upon when N.F.L. players complain to the referees. But at least they don\u2019t urinate on them.<\/p>\n
The same cannot be said for the competitors in the Puppy Bowl, Animal Planet\u2019s canine football game that takes place in October but does not air until the afternoon of Super Bowl Sunday.<\/p>\n
The event\u2019s referee, Dan Schachner, stays ready for all eventualities by keeping five identical uniforms in his dressing room so he can change when accidents occur. Mr. Schachner, 49, admitted he had gotten lax about handing out penalties for \u201cpremature watering of the lawn\u201d since he began calling the game in 2011.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t automatically reach for the flag,\u201d he said. \u201cWe have a game to play.\u201d<\/p>\n
This year\u2019s Puppy Bowl, which will be televised at 2 p.m. Eastern time on Sunday, is the 20th edition of the event, a milestone for a program that began as a tongue-in-cheek feed of puppy playtime before evolving into a counterprogramming juggernaut.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The three-hour skirmish over a football-shaped chew toy has been on the air for longer than \u201cGrey\u2019s Anatomy.\u201d Animal Planet said last year\u2019s Puppy Bowl \u201creached\u201d more than 13 million viewers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Its success comes with unique production challenges. The players cannot throw because they lack opposable thumbs. They fall asleep at the 20-yard line, and sometimes they try to bathe in the water bowl. They are especially bad at determining when to go for a 2-point conversion<\/a>.<\/p>\n It takes more than 100 crew members and 200 poop bags to coax the puppies into some semblance of a football game. \u201cThe Macy\u2019s Thanksgiving Day Parade requires just as much coordination,\u201d said Howard Lee, the president of Discovery Networks, which owns Animal Planet.<\/p>\n In an interview, Mr. Lee described the program as a call for pet adoption sneakily disguised as a football game. According to Animal Planet, all of the 1,298 dogs that have played in past Puppy Bowls have been adopted. The event results in a surge of interest in shelters whose puppies take the field, although those that play in the game have usually been adopted by the time it airs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The 131 members of this year\u2019s lineup were selected through an online casting call this summer, and came from more than 70 shelters and rescue centers across the United States. All were between three and six months old.<\/p>\n As in the N.F.L., there were much-hyped prospects: Levi, a 72-pound Great Dane, was the largest puppy ever to compete in the event. Bark Purdy, a Chihuahua mix, shares a name (and perhaps his agility) with the quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers.<\/p>\n In October, the draft picks were transported to a hockey arena in Glens Falls, N.Y., that had been outfitted with a 28-foot-long AstroTurf field. The game was filmed over the course of a week to allow the puppies to take ample hydration and nap breaks. The producers subsequently edited down any slow periods in game play.<\/p>\n To avoid injuries, smaller breeds like Dachshunds and pugs faced off in the first half, while the huskies and bloodhounds came on for a brawnier second half. (In Mr. Schachner\u2019s experience, smaller breeds are more likely to \u201celude defenders\u201d and \u201cbreak tackles.\u201d) Puppies on two teams \u2014 Team Ruff and Team Fluff \u2014 scored touchdowns by carrying chew toys into either end zone.<\/p>\n Victoria Schade, the on-set trainer, benches dogs when they are looking overwhelmed. In her 18 years working on the Puppy Bowl, she has perfected her technique for getting the dogs to gaze up patriotically during the national anthem: dangling treats above their heads.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cFreeze-dried chicken, freeze-dried liver, freeze-dried cheese: That\u2019s going to get your Puppy Bowl-worthy performance,\u201d Ms. Schade said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The first Puppy Bowl, which aired in 2005, was more like a pickup game. Animal Planet\u2019s producers had been asked by the network\u2019s general manger to devise some kind of counterprogramming for the Super Bowl, said Margo Kent, who was then an executive producer for the network.<\/p>\n The task seemed impossible. \u201cWe would joke, \u2018Why are we working this hard?\u2019\u201d Ms. Kent said. \u201cLet\u2019s just put puppies in a box and point a camera at it.\u201d<\/p>\n They tried it out at a Discovery soundstage in Silver Spring, Md., with a couple of dozen dogs from local shelters. Camera operators filmed from behind a layer of clear plexiglass, which had to be wiped down frequently because the puppies kept pressing their wet noses against it.<\/p>\n \u201cWe could not believe how well it did,\u201d said David Doyle, who was at the time the vice president of production and development at Animal Planet. The event became the \u201cdarling of ad sales and senior management,\u201d he added. \u201cAll of a sudden it became all about, how can we make money off this cool thing?\u201d<\/p>\n By Puppy Bowl II, ads for Subaru lined the stadium. A kitten halftime show was added, but that went awry when the explosion of confetti cannons caused all of the cats to leap out of the filming enclosure, Ms. Kent said. (It was retaped, with crew sprinkling the confetti by hand.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Scorekeeping and uniforms were added in Puppy Bowl XI, and a sloth was introduced as assistant referee three years later. With each flashy addition, the Puppy Bowl also dedicated a larger share of airtime to encouraging viewers to adopt pets, including senior dogs and puppies with special needs.<\/p>\n If the event is good for puppy adoption, it may be even better for Warner Bros. Discovery, one of the entertainment industry\u2019s biggest, and newest, behemoths<\/a>. Last year, Puppy Bowl viewership added more than four million additional viewers, according to the network, thanks in part to Discovery\u2019s acquisition of WarnerMedia in 2022<\/a>.<\/p>\n For the first time, Puppy Bowl XIX was broadcast simultaneously on Animal Planet, Discovery Channel, HBO Max, TBS and Discovery+. \u201cThe viewership has jumped especially because we\u2019ve had more eyeballs from all these different platforms,\u201d Mr. Lee said.<\/p>\n Animal Planet said it would not share the cost to produce the Puppy Bowl or the advertising revenue it brings in. But the program tends to have a high return on investment, said Mr. Doyle, who is now an executive vice president at Hearst Media Production Group. The first Puppy Bowl cost less than $100,000 to produce, he said. \u201cI\u2019m sure it costs five times what we spent on it or more,\u201d he speculated. \u201cBut it\u2019s probably bringing in 50 times the amount of money.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Puppy Bowl crew members past and present offered various theories for the program\u2019s continued dominance: It appeals widely across age groups; it\u2019s easy to watch while making chili. Your preferred team can get eliminated during the N.F.L. playoffs, but it cannot fall short of making the Puppy Bowl.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Then almost all of them circled back to the obvious: People really like puppies.<\/p>\n Many viewers are motivated by the Puppy Bowl to seek out one of their own. Erika Proctor, 42, the executive director of Green Dogs Unleashed, a special needs animal rescue center in Troy, Va., estimated she gets close to 100 emails the day of the Puppy Bowl asking about adoptions and training. An uptick in applications follows, she said.<\/p>\n Green Dogs Unleashed, which has been sending dogs to the Puppy Bowl for the past 10 years, is responsible for the expense of transporting the puppies to Glens Falls and lodging them there. That was a challenge at first, Ms. Proctor said, but it \u201ccomes back to us tenfold in the awareness that it brings to the country of our special-needs animals.\u201d<\/p>\n Those who are on set for the filming of the Puppy Bowl do not necessarily know its winner. Producers film endings in which each team triumphs, and the victor is determined in postproduction.<\/p>\n That means Mr. Schachner cannot help the people who direct message him on social media every year asking for tips that might help them bet on the game\u2019s outcome. Other common prop bets concern the point spread of the final score and the age of the M.V.P. (Most Valuable Puppy).<\/p>\n Despite appearances, the producers insist that Puppy Bowl glory is earned on the field, not scripted by its human supervisors.<\/p>\n \u201cYou have to condense it down to make it a story that\u2019s understandable and fun,\u201d said Joe Boyle, a senior vice president for production and development at Discovery, \u201cbut we follow what really happened.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\u2018Why Are We Working This Hard?\u2019<\/h2>\n
\u2018Most Valuable Puppy\u2019<\/h2>\n