Did the Miami Dolphins ever have a real dolphin at their stadium? Here's the story

If you weren’t attending Miami Dolphins football games in the '70s, or you’re unfamiliar with the comedy movie “Ace Ventura Pet Detective,” then you might not know that the Miami Dolphins’ mascot used to be a real dolphin.

But by the time Jim Carrey’s 1994 film was released, almost three decades had passed since the dolphin, Flipper, inhabited a tank at the Dolphins’ stadium.

Here’s the history behind the Miami Dolphins mascot.

Is the Miami Dolphins mascot a real dolphin?

No, but it once was. Flipper, the Dolphins’ first mascot, joined the team in 1966 and lived in a tank on the east side of the Orange Bowl, the stadium that served as the Dolphins’ home field for the team’s first 21 seasons.

But Flipper wasn’t just any dolphin. She has a popular TV show that she shared her name with, which was partially set in South Florida. “Flipper” aired on NBC from 1964 to 1967. There were several dolphins who played Flipper. And in 1966, when the Miami Dolphins joined the American Football League, team owner Joe Robbie made a deal with the Miami aquarium, where the "Flipper" dolphins lived, to use one of their trained dolphins as his team’s mascot.

Flipper was an expensive mascot. She had to be transported from the aquarium to the stadium for every game, so she could entertain early Fins fans with jumps for every touchdown or field goal scored.

After the Dolphins’ 1968 season, Robbie allegedly decided to stop using Flipper as the team’s mascot due to the high cost associated with transporting and maintaining a live dolphin and tank on the field. But most longtime Dolphins fans who attended games then remember Flipper staying in the Orange Bowl until the late '70s.

The current Miami Dolphins mascot is a light grey anthropomorphic dolphin named "T.D." that wears a Dolphins football uniform, with a tiny Dolphins helmet topping its huge head and its mouth always slightly opened.

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What does T.D., the Miami Dolphins’ mascot name, stand for?

T.D. stands for touchdown. T.D. has been the Dolphins’ mascot since the end of the Dan Marino era and was introduced as the team’s mascot in 1997. But according to a 2020 article from The Athletic that ranked each of the NFL’s mascots and a Dolphins fan-written article from Bleacher Report, T.D. falls short when it comes to meeting fan expectations.

T.D. doesn’t rank very high on anyone’s list of best NFL mascots. Maybe it’s the weirdness of seeing a “dolphin” walk around on dry land, with one huge bright blue eye painted on each side of its head. Or maybe T.D. is just outshined by some of the NFL’s more charismatic mascots.

Whatever it is, T.D. seems to mainly be a staple for the kids that come to Dolphins games, not the adult fins fans who buy the tickets.

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Who has the best mascot in the NFL?

For the third time since it was introduced to the NFL in 2006, The Indianapolis Colts’ mascot, Blue, was named the 2023 NFL Mascot of the Year, an award voted on by all of the mascots at the NFL Mascot Summit each year.

There isn’t one official list for the best mascots in the NFL, since all of them rely on opinion, but none of the lists that exist have T.D. ranked in any of the top spots. In fact, T.D. shows up as the first mention on The Bleacher Report’s list of 6 NFL mascots that need to be replaced.

Although bringing a live dolphin back to the stadium seems popular among some Dolphins fans, according to conversations between fans on Reddit, it will probably never happen. Not only is it expensive, but it is arguably not the best idea to have a live dolphin cooped up in a tank in a loud stadium for every home game.

The closest we will come to the days of Flipper will be re-watching Jim Carrey save Snowflake the dolphin from a kidnapping in “Ace Ventura Pet Detective.”

Lianna Norman covers trending news in Palm Beach County for The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at lnorman@pbpost.com. You can follow her reporting on social media @LiannaNorman on X.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Miami Dolphins' NFL mascot was once a real dolphin, named Flipper