BTN.com staff, July 11, 2012

The video view counter on YouTube suggests that many of you have seen the variety of video spoofs of Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe" video. There was the Harvard baseball team, the SMU rowing team, and the Miami Dolphins cheerleaders. Even Sesame Street's Cookie Monster got in on the act with his own distinct cookie-related twist.

You can now count a handful of Big Ten mascots as inspired fans of the song, too.

A sharp-eyed reader spotted this video posted on the YouTube channel for The Real Sparty, which is run by the Michigan State Student Alumni Foundation.

If you watch the video, look for our favorite part when Minnesota's Goldy appears from out of the water. But not all of the Big Ten mascots are involved in this video. We demanded answers so we called Janel Rutzen, the program coordinator for the Sparty Mascot at Michigan State.

Rutzen told us the mascots came up with the idea on their own and that everyone was invited. Northwestern and Purdue declined to participate, and, of course, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan don't have animated mascot characters. But the seven that did participate shot their pieces separately and the team edited it together. Michigan State's YouTube channel posted it because it had the kind of strong following that could get the video in front of the most people.

What's been the feedback so far? "Pretty good so far," Rutzen said. "I think we're at point now where so many people are watching it on YouTube that the video views haven't caught up just yet. So we'll see where it goes."

Update, Friday, July 13:  New developments in the "Call Me Maybe" mascot video story. While BTN.com was first told by a representative from Michigan State that two Big Ten mascots declined to participate in the video,  the Purdue Exponent now reports that Purdue Pete wasn't in the video due to a miscommunication. ?They emailed a former Pete at Purdue, who forwarded the email to a current Pete,? associate athletics director of communications Tom Schott wrote in an email to the paper. ?The current Pete didn?t see the email until after the video was shot.? You can read the full story here. We will post further updates as warranted.