'Harlem Shake' Video Gets 11 Div-III Football Players Thrown Off Team

By now, we all get that the Harlem Shake craze is pretty dumb, but is participation in the online meme bad enough to get almost a dozen NCAA Division III football players kicked off their team? According to Susquehanna University in Selinsgrove, Pa, it is.

If you haven’t seen any Harlem Shake videos, the concept is simple and ultimately harmless: One person enters a crowded room of people doing their own things and begins to dance, while everybody else carries on as normal. Then, the scene changes, and everyone starts getting down. See? Nothing too crazy, right? As long as you don’t attend Susquehanna University, anyway.

This week, members of Susquehanna University’s football team posted a YouTube video entitled “Harlem Shake: Weight Room Edition,” which appears below and features 11 members of the squad dancing in the school’s weight room. After the school’s administration found out about the video, all the players in the Harlem Shake video were dismissed from the team, according to BleacherReport.com.

Admittedly, several of the football players were pantomiming apparent sexual acts, but is that enough to cut short the football careers of the young men?

Graham Watson at Yahoo Sports may have summed it up best: “Sure there are some vulgarities in this particular video, and these players are supposed to be representing the university, but kicking them off the team is a bit much. They aren’t harming anyone, there’s no nudity. Even the vulgar acts aren’t as vulgar as they could be. For the most part, it looks like a prank. A poorly thought-out prank, but a prank nonetheless.

Susquehanna tight end Logan Skillman criticized the decision on Twitter early Friday, and while the tweet was later deleted, a Redditor was able to capture a screenshot before it disappeared.

Skillman wrote: “@footballscoop bunch of my teammates thrown off for a dance … There are much worse things that go unpunished at school every day.”

Watch the Harlem Shake video that got nearly a dozen football players kicked off their team below.