Young men swung back toward Democrats in last week’s midterm elections, and plenty of people are trying to figure out why. One writer thinks the answer was hiding in plain sight on Saturday mornings.
According to a new column, the growing backlash against Pat McAfee on College GameDay was an early sign that young men were fed up. The writer argues that men have finally grown tired of the “Barstool-tinged masculinity” that defined the Trump era.
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McAfee has faced a wave of criticism this fall. It started when he complained on air about a University of Utah video in which students called him “corny” and “creepy” ahead of GameDay‘s Oct. 24 visit to Salt Lake City.
The ESPN analyst later said he had been staying off X because people were calling him a “snowflake.” He has also been compared to MrBeast for making himself the main character on GameDay.
The backlash even reached cable news. On Election Day, Joe Scarborough used part of Morning Joe to complain about McAfee “ruining College GameDay,” and suggested the manosphere “may get washed aside.”
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In a column published on Slate this week, Luke Winkie argued that young men returned to Democrats because they are tired of the Trump-era version of masculinity. He pointed to what some analysts have dubbed “chud fatigue.”
“Chud fatigue is essentially the theory that voters were exasperated beyond repair by the figures who gained prominence on the back of the Trump wave,” Winkie wrote. “That maybe society was better off when a boring liberal consensus rested at the center of our nation.”
“At long last, it seems like chud fatigue has crossed over into the black box of the swing-voting white male. That means a new political dawn is upon us; men are ready to be normal again,” he continued.
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Winkie said he saw it coming weeks before the midterms. And the place he saw it was the Instagram comments on College GameDay posts.
This general “chud fatigue” is visible in the response to McAfee. Winkie described McAfee as someone who has “a distinct MAGA-ish gestalt,” though he acknowledged McAfee “isn’t explicitly partisan.”
“McAfee’s ascension was designed to defang the network’s buttoned-up aesthetic, making it more palatable to this profane horde of Trumpified young men who—especially during the bleary-eyed miasma of 2025—were understood to represent a new cultural mainstream,” Winkie wrote. “That worked for a while, but in 2026, the worm began to turn.”
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He pointed to the many commenters who sarcastically mock McAfee’s habit of ripping off his shirt on set. One such comment, posted on a video from GameDay‘s Utah visit, racked up more than 16,000 likes.
“NO WAY! Pat took his shirt off again! I can’t stop belly laughing,” the comment reads. “I can’t wait to bet on all the games on Kalshi, Polymarket, Fanduel, Draft Kings! And the one where Sydney Sweeney has no clothes! I love you Pat, I’m going to start drinking again!”
Winkie argued that because college football fans aren’t a reliably liberal group, their frustration with McAfee says something bigger.
“When I read those Instagram comments, what I see is a contrived, fratty, 2020s-era right-wing machismo that is officially past its sell-by date,” he wrote. “A critical mass of men no longer subscribe to this way of being—if they ever did in the first place.”
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Winkie added that “Pat McAfee ripping off his shirt on the set of College GameDay” is the clearest picture of what the MAGA movement thought young men wanted. And last week, he argued, they rejected it.
“Please, for the love of god, can we just be normal?” Winkie concluded.
The post ‘Men are ready to be normal again’: Writer says Pat McAfee outrage shows a shift to Democrats appeared first on The Comeback: Today’s Top Sports Stories & Reactions.
