How Can I Adopt The Puppy Bowl Puppies?

On Feb. 11, viewers across the country will tune in to the most important athletic event of the year — and they might stick around to watch the Super Bowl, too.

Puppy Bowl XX marks the 20th year of adoptable dogs competing against each other on a pup-sized field. The prize is technically the Lombarky Trophy (a riff on the Super Bowl’s Vince Lombardi Trophy). But really, every player on Team Ruff and Team Fluff wins something even better: a home of their own.

Indeed, CNN reports that every Puppy Bowl participant in the game’s nearly two-decade history has been adopted. And this year will be “the biggest yet,” Animal Planet promises. Expect to see 131 puppies from 73 shelters and rescues.

This year’s pups include a few record-setters for the event, including the largest and smallest players ever, like Levi, a 70-lb. Great Dane, and Sweetpea, a 1.7-lb. Cavapoo. There are many pun-ny puppies, too, such as a Chihuahua called Bark Purdy (named after the 49ers quarterback), and a shepherd-poodle mix named Guy Fureri.

Want To Adopt A Player?

The great thing about the Puppy Bowl is that the roster is filled with dogs looking for a good home. There’s one tiny caveat, though. Unlike the Super Bowl, the Puppy Bowl isn’t a live event — in fact, it films in October. “By the time the Puppy Bowl actually airs, most of these puppies have already found their forever homes,” rufferee Dan Schachner told Mental Floss.

Granted, that’s a pretty good problem to have! That happened to a notable Puppy Bowl player from 2022, Team Fluff’s Irwin. By the time the three-legged rescue from Puerto Rico charmed viewers on TV, he had been adopted by the actor Jeffrey Dean Morgan via The Sato Project. The Walking Dead star wrote, “Make no mistake... he did the choosing.”

The bottom line? If you’re ready to open your heart and home to a new dog, the Puppy Bowl can help you. In his interview with Mental Floss, Schachner said you should visit the Animal Planet website while you watch the game. “And if you see a puppy that you fall in love with, check him out,” he explained. “They may be adoptable. And if not, that shelter will have other puppies who are equally adorable, maybe even from the same litter.”

Want another fun way to help the puppies? Warner Bros. Discovery is teaming up with Best Friends Animal Society to match donations that cover adoption fees through Feb. 14.

As a reminder, you can watch the big game (before the other big game) on TV at 2 p.m. ET via Animal Planet, Discovery, TBS, or TruTv, or stream via Max or Discovery+.