Meet Pudge: the college football cat taking the internet by storm

In close to 30 years in college sports, Derek van der Merwe has worked at Central Michigan, Austin Peay, Arizona and now Bowling Green, where he is the athletic director. He grew up in South Africa, the son of missionaries, and was a co-captain for Central Michigan’s football team in the mid-1990s. At this point, when he adds up all the miles traveled, the late-night calls, the emails - so many emails - it can start to feel as if he has seen close to everything, until, like clockwork, there comes a reminder of that impossibility.

The latest reminder is a 3-year-old shorthair Persian named Pudge.

“We’ve actually had meetings,” van der Merwe said, “where you have a table full of people talking, like, ‘Okay, what do we do next with this cat?’”

Pudge is, at the moment, the most famous cat in sports. (Don’t even start, LSU fans.) In mid-August, after a Bowling Green player suffered a knee injury, long snapper George Carlson had a simple idea: Bring Pudge, his cat, to the locker room to cheer everybody up. Ever since, Pudge’s star turn has been a whirlwind. Finn Hogan, a Bowling Green wide receiver with 193,000 TikTok followers, introduced Pudge to the wider world. The local news descended, then “Good Morning America” mentioned him. Carlson, as Pudge’s guardian, signed a name, image and likeness (NIL) deal with Influxer, an apparel company that now sells shirts featuring a cartoon version of Pudge wearing a Bowling Green helmet. EA Sports just added Pudge to its “College Football 26” video game as “Star of the Week.”

After Bowling Green beat Lafayette in its season opener last week, Pudge, an indoor cat, celebrated with the team on the field. He is expected to be on the sideline Saturday afternoon when the Falcons visit Cincinnati. Despite multiple attempts, The Washington Post could not reach Pudge for comment. Asked how Pudge is dealing with the attention, Carlson, holding Pudge during a recent phone interview, didn’t hesitate.

“He’s pretty good,” Carlson said. “He loves all the pets.”

Pudge’s beginning with the Carlson family was also cinematic. Growing up on a farm in Woodstock, Illinois, Carlson was surrounded by all kinds of animals: cows, chickens, pigs, bunnies, birds. And always, always, at least a few cats, which led his parents to the South Side of Chicago in the summer of 2023. A breeder of shorthair Persian cats asked to meet them in a grocery store parking lot. Then the breeder zoomed up on a motor scooter, the kind you might see parked next to a casino slot machine, and had Pudge in the front basket, wrapped in a blanket. It felt like that scene from “E.T.”

Once Carlson, a senior, moved from the Bowling Green dorms to an apartment, he started bringing cats to campus, first one of the family’s other Persians, then Pudge. With an automatic feeder, a cat is a good pet for a college athlete, especially a four-year starter in football. Turns out it can be a good mascot, too.

Before Carlson brought Pudge to the football facility, only a few of his teammates knew about the cat. Carlson estimates Pudge had been outside only once or twice. So he put down a towel by his locker and placed the cat on it. Pudge took in the room. Players trickled by to pet him. Soon, Pudge returned to meet the niece of a team staffer, then appeared at an event for season ticket holders. Bowling Green’s marketing team was smitten. Then Hogan, the wide receiver/influencer, blew it up on TikTok.

“Y’all might have a 300 million dollar facility,” Hogan wrote on his post. “But do you have a locker room cat?”

“I mean, I’m just so happy that he’s brought joy to everybody,” said Carlson, who drew on his hours of watching cat content on social media to start an Instagram account for Pudge, which is up to 8,500 followers. “He’s just such a great little cat. He’s hilarious. I’ve thought that for a while, and I’m happy people are starting to see it. It confirms what I knew: that he is a funny little cat that people would enjoy.”

This is not the first splash Bowling Green has made in 2025. In March, the Ohio-based school hired Eddie George, the former star NFL running back and Heisman Trophy winner at Ohio State, to be its coach. George is allergic to cats, but Pudge is hypoallergenic, meaning the 51-year-old coach is in the clear. He has even held Pudge, and there are photos to prove it.

Between George and Pudge, it has been a big year for Bowling Green on social media. And if there’s a lesson in these cases, perhaps it’s that neither originated in a PowerPoint presentation, that organic - really, truly organic - is something marketing consultants can’t deliver, no matter how much you pay them. The program needed a coach, so it hired George from Tennessee State. Carlson wanted to lift his teammates’ spirits, so he zipped Pudge into his cat backpack, then carried him like a textbook to the locker room.

“You do all this work and try to drive brand and growth, and the thing that takes over is the cat story,” van der Merwe said. “In the spring, people were asking me, ‘Do you mind if we meet Eddie George and get his autograph?’ And now I’ve actually had people approach me to see if there’s an opportunity to take a picture with Pudge.”