I try very, very hard to keep my ears away from today’s pop music, because autotuning is like Fran Drescher scraping her teeth across a chalkboard to me. So when some girl named Carly Rae Jepsen became an overnight sensation with a song called “Call Me Maybe” I was determined to avoid it as well, because people kept Tweeting about how catchy it was despite being terrible. Then I attended two weddings this weekend and that was shot to hell, because I think I heard it roughly a dozen times.

With that plan destroyed, I figured it was time to check out that Harvard baseball video that has racked up 8 million views on YouTube over the past few weeks. In case you’re unfamiliar – and if you are, you deserve a Purple Heart – the Harvard boys performed a little choreographed dance routine in their team van and the Internet went apesh*t for it. Admittedly, it was inspired, despite the song being cookie cutter, assembly line pop regurgitation.

Sadly, I didn’t watch my step as I turned away, and I fell into a terrible YouTube wormhole of “response” and “tribute” videos to the Crimson, and by response and tribute videos I mean terrible, blatant rip-offs. Apparently some other sports teams saw Harvard’s unique performance and successful viral video as a glove-drop and they all tried to out-do it. You know, by doing the same freaking thing.

After the jump, take a leap into the wormhole with me and watch how a meme is born and then slaughtered in a matter of days.

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By way of Prep Rally comes the least consequential moment of fastball-on-bird violence in baseball history.

Watch in squinting wonder as Springfield Sacred Heart-Griffin High School pitcher Ryne Elvers tries to shut down City Series rivals Springfield Southeast High at Lanphier Park with a fastball so fierce that were it to ever hypothetically strike an animal mid-flight, it would shred and splatter the poor thing in a pillow fight explosion like so much Randy Johnson. It would not have any reasonable chance of hitting a bird and having the bird just kinda keep going and be fine.

Cough.

Sophomore Ryne Elvers pitched 5 2/3 innings to get his third win in four decisions. Elvers also pulled a Randy Johnson when, while delivering an 0-1 pitch to Robbie Cooper in the fifth inning, Elvers plucked a bird in flight. The bird managed to fly off, minus some feathers.

“OOH! HIT DA BIRD” – concerned onlooker

Thank God he didn’t throw a change-up, it would’ve just landed on the bird’s back and flown away.

Full court alleys-oop happen from time to time, but as a buzzer beater? I’m not sure what was on the line in this Vinita, Oklahoma, high school game and I’m not even sure about the score — the scoreboard makes it look like it’s 40-5 — but a clock-manipulating bounce pass (it’s not gonna start until someone touches the ball) off the inbound to a guy downcourt is the raddest whether they won the game with it or not.

Of course, the major issue of the video is the terrible defense, so if it was actually 40-5 I wouldn’t be shocked.

This clip comes to us courtesy of Clay from Club 93.7, who very appropriately play Today’s Hottest Jamz. If a hot jam ever necessitated a Z, it’s this one.

Like most people, I watch the Super Bowl for the slam dunks.

Thanks to Cameron Smith at Prep Rally, my dream of watching New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski dunk on a bunch of high schoolers with Franz Ferdinand playing in the background has finally come true … turns out that before he was inspiring Twisted Sister covers and making Bibi Jones ply her trade off the clock he was simply a gigantic f**king high schooler who could jump slightly and monster jam it home. Pretty cool.

At least now we know how he managed to graduate. It certainly wasn’t his grades in Spanish.

"I SAID ONLY FRUIT PUNCH GATORADE!"

As the fan of a perennially underachieving middle tier college football team, I’ve long since accepted the pains of the reality that my school will never be at the top of any 5-star high school recruits’ lists. However, that could eventually change with the BCS possibly doing away with the automatic qualifier status for select conferences in 2014, and now it could especially change since high school seniors apparently value their jersey numbers more than the opportunity to play for free educations and the attention of the NFL.

The country’s top high school players get to spend a week in San Antonio as part of the perks of being selected for the All-American Bowl on Jan. 8, but as Rivals’ Tom Bergeron points out, some of these kids are just skipping the entire process by taking their attitudes straight to the NFL.

Kevon Seymour of Pasadena (Calif.) Muir was annoyed he had No. 41 instead of his preferred No. 1. And Seymour willingly admits he’ll look at the rosters of potential colleges to see if No. 1 is available. If it’s not, the school’s chances of landing him diminish.

One was visibly upset.

Mike Davis of Stone Mountain (Ga.) Stephenson made such a fuss about his assigned No. 16 that he was given a new number (14), making him the only player without his name on his jersey. But that didn’t help – neither was the No. 28 he wanted.

Seymour has offers from just about every school on the left coast – namely USC and Oregon – as well as Florida and Nebraska, and interest from Notre Dame. Basically what he’s saying, though, is that if his choice comes down to USC and Oregon, he’s going to pick the Trojans, not because they’re primed to make a BCS Championship run this year, but because they have the No. 1 jersey available and Oregon doesn’t.

Whatever happened to the good old days when guys just picked 69 because it’s hilarious?

What you need to know:

BB&N Knights vs. St Sebs football game was played at Harvard Coliseum. This catch was the last score of the game for the Knights and allowed them to win (31-28). Caught by Chad Kohler follow me on twitter @ChadBrah

I love the addition of “I filmed this, my Twitter handle has ‘brah’ in it, follow me”. Anyway, what you need to look and listen for:

- 0:07-0:08 – #3 for St. Sebastian’s (how funny is it that you’d abbreviate a saint’s name to call them St. Sebs) contributes almost nothing to the play, lightly shoves the receiver to the ground and starts pumping his fists and going WOO~!.

- 0:09-0:12 – Touchdown is called, and #3 instantly turns into Troy Barnes from ‘Community’. I can’t make out exactly what he’s saying here, but it sounds like “NO, ARE YOU F**KING KIDDING ME, BULLsh*t!” Him turning to the camera and gesturing like he’s upset about missing the Soul Train awards is the best part.

- 0:14-0:20 – It’s probably someone in the crowd making noise, but the way it’s filmed makes it look like the guy who caught the ball is jumping up and down yelling like Howard Dean. I can’t even assign an onomatopoeia to a scream like that. It’s like “YES! YESSSS! WOOOOO” from the mouth of a condor.

- 0:24-0:26 – “That’s why you work hard right there! That’s why you work hard!” Not sure if he’s talking about accidentally catching a touchdown pass, or just walking backwards slowly with your head up and hoping for the best instead of jumping or actively trying to catch the ball.

[h/t Prep Rally]