Victoria Schade may not wear a Team Ruff or Team Fluff bandana, but she is arguably the real MVP of the Puppy Bowl.
Schade has been the game’s lead trainer since Puppy Bowl III, which works out to 20 years (140 in dog years!) and makes her tenure half-a-decade longer than referee Dan Schachner, who has long been the human face of the canine Super Bowl counter-programming. Not that anyone is looking at that dude amid all the cuteness. Sorry, Dan.
Sunday’s Puppy Bowl XXII, a yearly adoption event disguised as a competition, features 125 puppies and 14 senior dogs. Of that pack, 15 have special needs, and “every single one is perfect,” as Schade lovingly (and correctly) put it to The Hollywood Reporter.
Working with the special needs dogs, including this year the three-legged Wynonna and the deaf and vision-impaired Eleanor, is “a great joy, because they surprise us,” Schade said. “We never discount pups based on how many legs they have or whether or not they’re sighted. It’s really beautiful to watch how they acclimate to this completely new environment.”
The same goes for 2026’s newest addition: senior dogs. In the Team Oldies vs. Team Goldies halftime game, any lack of energy was made up in “strategy,” Schade jokes. “Puppies are just scattershot, like, ‘Let’s go!’ And the older dogs are like, ‘Let’s think about these plays.’”
Think of the puppies as Rob Gronkowski and the seniors as Tom Brady. That makes Schade Bill Belichick, I guess, in this analogy — both ought to be first-ballot Hall of Famers in their own version of the game.
But Schade doesn’t really coach her players so much as she acts as their biggest cheerleader.
“‘Trainer’ is kind of the catch-all term, but the reality of what we’re seeing on the field is just pure unadulterated puppy play. There is no ‘training’ them to score points or anything. We put them out in the field and we let them have a great time,” Schade says. “My role is more ensuring puppy happiness and safety throughout gameplay.”
Like a coach, Schade spends most of her time patrolling the sidelines, “just watching for any signs of (a pup) being overtired or unsure of themselves.” That’s when she’ll burn a timeout and sub in a fresh body.
Schade also handles “any directed action you see,” like creating the attentive response to the Puppy Bowl’s national anthem. “When you see the puppies looking up at the flag, they’re looking up at me,” she says. “I’m actually standing right by the camera with a little treat going, ‘Hey puppy!’”
One thing even Schade can’t teach these newborns is potty training. Her players shit the field more than Brady and Belichick’s New England Patriots did in Super Bowls XLII and XLVI against the New York Giants.
“I wish,” Schade said. “We do a lot of cleanup, and that’s another democratic process. We have volunteers that definitely help out with that, but I’ll step in and pick it up. It’s really about proximity — the closest to the puddle or the pile. Who can get it up fastest? Dan will do it. I’ll do it. I wish there was a way we could train puppies not to potty on the field, but it’s, again, all natural.”
Somewhere, Belichick is remembering Gronk’s rookie season and nodding his head in agreement. OK, that’s the last joke I’ll make against the Patriots, who could still get the last laugh on Sunday against the Seattle Seahawks in the real Super Bowl, a rematch of XLIX.
One thing Schade, Schachner and the other bipeds involved in the annual October production are not really needed for is picking the game’s MVPs: Most Valuable Puppy.
“That’s all puppy,” Schade says. “That has nothing to do with us. They strut their stuff, and it almost becomes a no-brainer.”
It’s often not the ones they predict ahead of filming.
“We have these moments where the shy puppies that are really not sure of themselves, the right puppy will run over and invite them to play in just the right way — because it is a dance — and that shy puppy will say, ‘I think I can do this.’ And they run out there and dominate,” Schade said. “It’s so magical. I don’t think that the viewing audience necessarily gets to see that, but oh my gosh, I love it. It’s one of my favorite things.”
Puppy Bowl XXII airs Sunday, Feb, 8 at 2 p.m. ET/11 a.m. PT across Animal Planet, Discovery, TBS and truTV, and streams on HBO Max and Discovery+. Super Bowl LX airs on NBC and streams on Peacock starting at 6:30 p.m. ET/3:30 p.m. PT.
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