Puppies get in on bowl action

Today is one of my favorite TV days, and it comes down to two words: “Puppy Bowl.”

The puppies are back on Animal Planet (3 p.m., cable channel 43 in Spokane, 47 in Coeur d’Alene) for the cheapest, most pointless and clearly most adorable Super Bowl counterprogramming on Earth.

The Super Bowl – officially, Super Bowl XLI – is TV’s annual biggest show, drawing nearly 91 million viewers last year.

The Puppy Bowl – officially, Puppy Bowl III – averages about 2 million viewers, which for Animal Planet is about the same windfall as a Super Bowl audience.

They take a large pen, paint it to look like a football field, fill it with puppy toys, then let a dozen or so puppies loose to do puppy stuff. (Kittens come on at halftime.)

It sounds spectacularly dumb, even though you get an occasional close-up of a puppy nose through the water-bowl cam. But if you have even a tiny, shriveled soul, it’s irresistible.

For two years now, I’ve been in a room with a bunch of snack-eating, football-intense people who melted every time we switched to the puppies. Big, tough, macho guys would go “aaaawwww.” (Though one of them cried when the Seahawks lost last year, so I’m not sure he counts.)

A periodic highlight comes when a poor guy dressed as a referee – most likely a down-on-his-luck actor with a cruel agent – drops a penalty flag to stop play. Then he cleans up a puppy mess.

The thing runs on a three-hour loop, and will air until midnight Sunday. All the while, Animal Planet will be offering encouragement and advice for adopting puppies and kittens; more details are available at www.animalplanet.com.