PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — As the excitement builds for the Super Bowl, there’s an equally anticipated event happening on Sunday. Team Ruff takes on Team Fluff in Puppy Bowl XX, where canines representing animal shelters and rescue organizations from across the country will be hard at play.
Both teams will play for the Lombarky Trophy in Sunday afternoon’s game on Animal Planet. More than 130 puppies from 70 rescues and shelters from across the country will be featured.
West Chester’s Brandywine Valley SPCA has two dogs in the game. Team Ruff’s Vanessa was rescued from an animal cruelty case. Domenic, on Team Fluff, was a part of BVSPCA’s second chance program, which finds homes for dogs from other shelters that have high euthanasia rates.
BVSPCA spokesperson Sara Smith says the Puppy Bowl isn’t just about cute puppies playing with toys.
“This event really shines a light on the diversity [of] what you can find at your local rescue or at your local shelter,” she said. “Just go to your local shelter, go to your local rescue and adopt these animals. It really is saving lives.”
Other participating pups from the area will be Sasha from the Providence Animal Center in Media, as well as Bertie and Small Ed from Phoenix Animal Rescue in Chester Springs. There will also be 12 BVSPCA kittens featured during the broadcast, in the game’s stadium skybox.
Behind the scenes of the Puppy Bowl
Local pups aren’t all that tie the Puppy Bowl to our region. KYW Newsradio anchor Scott Graham has his own experience with the Puppy Bowl, having narrated the annual broadcast from 2012 through 2020.
“My material was — to the word — scripted, including all of the tremendous puns that would be thrown in and the side winks of the things that you would say about the individual puppies,” he shared.
Puppy Bowl filming typically takes place in the fall, then it goes through post-production with the narrator’s script ready in the beginning of January.
“In a lot of ways, it was one of the more taxing voice jobs that I have ever done, because you’re doing a lot of bopping around and yelling and screaming and having fun, but you are doing two takes of that for 3 1/2 hours at a time over a two-day stretch,” Graham said.
“By the end of it, I was a little sore of the throat from talking about the puppies, but it was so much fun and it was an interesting way that they put it together,” he said.
“It was always interesting to see what the finished product looked like once they put my voice back with what they did on the video.”