Forget football. The National Dog Show is Thanksgiving's best entertainment.

Watching football on Thanksgiving is a time-honored tradition for many families in the US. There’s just something about easing into your 6,000-calorie food coma while watching athletes sweat it out on your TV screen that screams AMERICA. But 2016 has been long and brutal, and maybe you’re in the mood for a gentler, fluffier form of competition this year.

Enter the National Dog Show, the adorable annual event where pedigreed dogs of all shapes and sizes (and their dedicated handlers and groomers) gather in Philadelphia to vie for fame and glory. The competition is broadcast on Thanksgiving Day at noon; here are four reasons it’s well worth a watch, even if you’re not dog-crazy.

It’s part of a long, rich tradition

The National Dog Show is always held in the Philadelphia area; it’s hosted by the Kennel Club of Philadelphia and sanctioned by the American Kennel Club. The city has a long history with purebred dog shows; the first dates back to 1876 at the Centennial Exposition, and a version of the National Dog Show has been held annually since the early 1900s (with a break from 1928 to 1932, during the Great Depression).

NDS is one of just six “benched” dog shows in the US, which means participating dogs must be present at the show and accessible to the public for the entire time, unless they are competing, exercising, or being groomed. (Unbenched shows, by contrast, only require the dogs to be present when their breed or other round is being judged.) So, yes, this means that if you happen to snag tickets to the National Dog Show, you can actually go backstage to meet the dogs and observe their sometimes hours-long grooming process. Even better, as Philly.com points out, “[A]s long as you ask first and they haven’t just gotten their fur done, many, if not most, dogs are pettable.”

The National Dog Show, of course, is not the only canine competition in the US; the Westminster Dog Show, held at Madison Square Garden, has also been around since the late 19th century and, until this year, even shared a host with NDS: David Frei, who ended his gig with Westminster after this year’s event due to a network agreement that sees the Westminster broadcast moving to Fox Sports in 2017 (previously, both shows were broadcast by NBC networks).

The largest dog show in the world is Crufts, held in Birmingham, England, which is considered the pinnacle of doggy achievement. To enter, dogs must qualify by placing high in another Kennel Club–licensed show, sort of like how people who want to run the New York Marathon have to get a certain time in a previous race first. Most delightfully and bizarrely of all, Crufts, unlike other dog shows, features a “heelwork” round, which involves dogs and their costumed handlers basically performing a dance routine to music.

It’s surprisingly educational

The National Dog Show divides its participants into seven groups: terrier, toy (Pomeranians, Chihuahuas, Shih Tzus), sporting (golden retrievers, pointers), working (boxers, Great Danes), hound, herding (English sheepdogs, Border collies), and non-sporting (everything else, including Dalmatians and French bulldogs). Each dog breed is judged individually; the winner from each breed participates in the group round, and the top dog from each group goes on to compete for the vaunted Best in Show award.

The judges look for the following:

Is this dog able to perform the job the breed was originally bred to do? Does this dog have all of the physical characteristics typical of their breed? How fit is the dog? Do they have the correct gait? Lastly, the judges study the expression on the dog’s face and general demeanor. Judges look for happy dogs that enjoy competing in the show.

The fascinating thing from a viewer’s perspective is the sheer variety of breeds these groups encompass. You’re probably familiar with several of the American Kennel Club–recognized breeds that compete at the National Dog Show: your Labradors and pugs, your mastiffs and fox terriers. You may even remember an odd breed or two from previous competitions; Westminster 2013, for instance, taught America how to spell Affenpinscher (which means “monkey-like terrier” in German) thanks to Best in Show winner Banana Joe. But probably even doggie die-hards won’t be familiar with all of the 200-plus breeds recognized, and NDS adds new ones nearly every year.

It doesn’t help that several of them are very rare and sound like something out of a J.K. Rowling novel: wirehaired vizslas, Keeshonds, Portuguese Podengo Pequenos, short-coated slobbermonsters (only one of those is made up). And part of the joy is hearing David Frei and John O’Hurley, longtime hosts of the television broadcast, read off the various breed names with obvious delight, letting every syllable roll off their tongues as each unfamiliar-looking beast takes the arena.

The hosts also bring their deep knowledge of canines to the commentary, resulting in a mix that’s both informative and irreverent. After watching the National Dog Show, you’ll know not only that weird mop-like dog on the cover of Beck’s Odelay is a Komondor but also that, interestingly, those fur cords require less maintenance than you’d expect.

The new breeds recognized for 2016, by the way, are the American hairless terrier (a furless descendant of the rat terrier), the Pumi (a Hungarian herding dog with a “whimsical expression”), and the Sloughi, a speedy, short-haired dog from North Africa.

There’s always potential for drama

As with any competition, the National Dog Show brings out rivalries, the potential for huge upsets, and occasional scandals. Last year when a prize-winning Irish setter named Jagger died after the Crufts show and the owners discovered poison in his stomach, leading to accusations of murder by a competitor, mainstream news outlets from Vanity Fair to Mashable picked up the story. Then there was the time in 2009 when the always understated PETA sent supporters dressed in Ku Klux Klan–style robes to the Westminster Dog Show to protest the event (PETA sees dog shows as cruel to the animals).

Occasionally, though, the drama just stems from the fact that despite the air of gentility and decorum that pervades dog shows, the competitors are still, well, dogs. That means despite the dogs’ high level of training, there’s always a chance something will go awry, to generally adorable results. Accidents can happen on the show floor, and occasionally a dog has other plans for how the day should go, like at Westminster 2015, when an impatient Leonberger named Dario decided he didn’t feel like waiting until after his round for a treat or two.

The ridiculous dog names alone are worth it

What’s in a name? For show dogs, a lot. You won’t find any Fidos and Rovers on the show circuit; instead, they’re named things like CH Roundtown Mercedes of Maryscot (a Scottish terrier who won NDS’s Best in Show in 2009) or Raydachs Playing With Fire V Gleishorbach (a fittingly long name for a long-bodied dachshund). The dogs also have nicknames or “call names,” which is how the incredible Lafford Fly Me Too Farleysbane, a Papillon, becomes the more prosaic Dave.

While these titles might seem overly complicated, even nonsensical, there’s generally a careful explanation to them. A few elements go into a show dog’s name. The name of the kennel where the dog was born is usually included. Then there’s the part of the name that’s individual to the dog and can really be anything — a favorite song or movie character, the name of a beloved athlete, etc. Breeders will often theme litters’ names around a certain subject to help distinguish one litter from the next. And if a puppy happens to be born to prize-winning dogs, it may get a name that combines or references the names of its prestigious parents.

Once a dog achieves certain qualifications or wins certain prizes, its name gets amended with letters designating the specific title won: CH for champion, CWSG for world show champion, and so on; these can be a prefix or a suffix depending on the designation. (The American Kennel Club has a detailed — and long — list of all the designations.) So when you’re watching the dog show on Thanksgiving and GCH Kiarry's Pandora's Box comes on your screen, you can truly appreciate the thought process that brought about that particular string of words.

The National Dog Show airs Thursday, November 24, at noon (all time zones) on NBC. Watch a live stream here. For some highly entertaining insight into the life of a show dog, please read this glorious 1995 profile of Biff the boxer by Susan Orlean.