Some of us cantankerous contrarians don’t spend Super Bowl Sunday drinking, partying, enjoying sports, or watching expensive commercials starring strippers. Animal Planet has carved itself a healthy, annual counterprogramming niche with its beloved Puppy Bowl, a repeating, two-hour pageant of puppies frolicking on a doggy-sized football field, competing over fuzzy toys, and listening to a human referee recite painful doggy puns aimed at the channel’s coveted grade-school viewer demographic. It’s predictable, lovable, huggable, non-sports comfort food.

At least, it was.

Puppy Bowl X is now facing competition from other basic-cable channels jumping on the bandwagon and diluting the magic, such as the Hallmark Channel’s Kitten Bowl and Nat Geo WILD’s Fish Bowl. (I’m not making those up. Check the links and feel the indignation overtake you.)

As if imitators aren’t enough, one controversial move has happened from within: Puppy Bowl X will be adding gratuitous penguin cheerleaders. Even though penguins have absolutely nothing to do with dogs (and the friendship between Bloom County‘s P. Opus and Rosebud does not count), Animal Planet is clearly kowtowing to pressure from programming executives eager to pander to fans of March of the Penguins, Happy Feet, Surf’s Up, Mr. Popper’s Penguins, or Batman Returns. You’d like to think Puppy Bowl would be too honorable for such shenanigans, and yet here we are.

I have it on good authority the changes and disappointments don’t stop there. Rumors are swirling from critics who’ve witnessed advance screenings that Puppy Bowl X is full of unwelcome omens that this cutesy institution may have run its course and needs to be put to sleep.

From the home office in Indianapolis, IN: Top 10 Signs “Puppy Bowl” Has Jumped the Shark:

10. The entire original cast has quit and been replaced by lower-paid unknowns

9. We meet the referee’s plucky, irritating sidekick named Scrappy

8. The fake stadium has moved from its original, folksy hometown to Honolulu

7. A pair of adult dogs is added to the lineup to add “romantic tension”

6. Two chihuahuas are clearly being groomed for their own spinoff series

5. The showrunner has been fired and replaced by the guys who ran Community season 4

4. This year’s MVP is a poodle named Ted McGinley

3. The shockingly brutal, TV-MA halftime show viewers will come to know as “the Red Shedding”

2. We learn Puppy Bowl IX was only a dream

And the number one sign that Puppy Bowl has jumped the shark:

The thirty-second teaser trailer for Puppy Bowl: the Movie starring Zac Efron and Katherine Heigl.