CLAY: I was so fired up and exhilarated by what I saw over the Labor Day weekend with college football kicking off that I couldn’t stay out of the studio even on Labor Day. Buck Sexton is out today. He’ll be back tomorrow. The crew will be back rolling with a regular Tuesday edition of the program. But I have to tell you, starting on Thursday night when college football returned, some of you know that we are in the midst of an OutKick bus tour all over the South.

If you live in the South, you may see the bus with my image on the side of it traveling all over the place. We started off Thursday in Knoxville; that’s where I did the show from. Friday, we went to Charlotte. The big game between Georgia and Clemson was going on, and I met tons of you listeners out in both of those cities. By the way, I’m going to Fayetteville, Arkansas, this weekend for the Texas-Arkansas game.

I’ll be down in Gainesville, Florida, for Alabama against Florida. What I saw left me so wildly optimistic about people finally standing up against the coronabros, the authoritarian dictators who are trying to convince all of you that your kids can’t go to school, that you can’t go to work, that your kids can’t play sports, that you can’t go to a sporting event and sit in a crowd without wearing a mask.

All over America, millions of college football fans said, “We are done with this. We’re done with masks. We’re done with living in fear. We’re done with not taking our lives back.” The tailgates were vibrant, and they were exciting. The crowds were packed! It was 100% normal. There were no ridiculous coaches wearing masks standing on the sideline. The cosmetic theater was vanishing.

And some of you out there may not be sports fans.

You may hate sports.

You may not care about them at all.

But I will tell you this right now: Normalcy follows what middle America does, and college football fans are the heartbeat of America. It is the good and pure and true silent majority. All over this country millions of people, whether you’re an SEC fan, a PAC-12 fan, an ACC fan, a Big 12 fan — whether you’re Notre Dame (hell of a game last night between Notre Dame and Florida State), whether you’re a Big Ten fan; whether your schools are small, FCS level — millions of people were in our stadiums.

For the first time since the Super Bowl in 2020, everything was normal, and it started on Thursday. But for many people… I hope you saw this viral clip. I want to give props to the Virginia Tech Hokies and all of their fans in Blacksburg, Virginia, because when I saw this… They come running out. I want you to listen to this 16-second clip that we pulled. Completely full stadium. Nobody wearing masks. Everybody exulting pure joy because that’s the essence of college football.

Listen to Enter Sandman as the Virginia Tech Hokies prepared to run on to the field. Listen to this:

(wild crowd noise and Enter Sandman)

That was Virginia Tech, a, quote-unquote, “blue state.” Nobody in masks. Everybody joyous, rapturous for the return of a normal college football season. In Wisconsin, viral clip. Did you see Jump Around when they played it? The entire stadium came undone. By the way, Penn State Pete ’em, but it was an incredible team in Camp Randall if you were a Wisconsin Badgers fan, by the way, quote, “blue state.”

Did you see Texas A&M? Did you see what the Aggies did? Twenty years after 9/11, this did a red, white, and blue stadium: Red up top in the upper deck, white in the middle, and blue down on the lower level. I hope you saw those videos. If you didn’t, I encourage you to go look at ’em at OutKick. What happened was college football fans were declaring independence from fear, from covid, from authoritarian, left-wing, lunatic dictators who have tried to take away normalcy from your life.

We talk a lot about, “How do you win?” I get this that question all the time. “How do we win, Clay?” You win by being normal. You win by refusing to cow down to the fear and the mandates. Do you know what? There are more covid cases right now in this country over Labor Day than there were last Labor Day. Think about what they said. In Virginia… You just heard the Virginia Tech fans there going crazy in a full, sold-out stadium.

In Virginia, they didn’t let kids play high school football last fall. More cases of covid this year. Last year was an election year; they lied to you. They wouldn’t let you play high school football last fall in Virginia because it “wasn’t safe.” This year, more covid cases than there were last year; full, sold-out stadium, nobody wearing masks, everybody exulting. In Wisconsin, which is part of the Big Ten, the Big Ten wouldn’t let their teams play last September because they said it wasn’t safe.

Well, the numbers are larger now for covid nationwide, yet people are playing. All over this country, people are standing up. And that’s why Joe Biden’s approval ratings are tanking to 43%. I’m telling you what I am seeing and feeling as I travel across this country. I was in Knoxville, Tennessee. We were doing a documentary on southern football that’s gonna air on Fox Nation.

Absolutely packed fraternity house parties. Usually on the messages that they hang out on sheets in those fraternity houses are insults against the opponent — fun, college, juvenile humor — making fun of whatever school is coming to play against them. Do you know what those banners had on them at the fraternity houses all over the country? A lot of you were tweeting me and Instagramming me and sending me these messages.

I saw ’em for myself at the University of Tennessee. They had the names of the 13 servicepeople who were killed in the terrorist attack in Afghanistan. That’s what those kids were focused on. At Auburn, they left 13 seats open for the 13 soldiers who lost their lives. As we get closer to the 20th anniversary of 9/11, here is what I am seeing as I travel across the country: People are fed up with the Joe Biden administration.

People are fed up with covid restrictions, and they are fighting back by being normal. Burning their masks, going tailgating, tipping back beers, high-fiving their friends, living their best lives. I’m telling you what I am seeing right now is a revolution. I talked about it when I was at the school board and all those parents showed up to fight back against the insane mask mandates on our children.

I saw it in the packed stadiums that I was a part of this weekend. I saw it all throughout the college campuses. People are standing up for freedom en masse in this country. They’re sick of being forced into their basements. They’re not going to stand for it any longer. And I gotta tell you, what I saw was so exhilarating! I’m telling you where we are headed is, I believe, a new embrace of American exceptionalism.

I think people are so fed up over the last five or six years with being told how awful America is, with the Big Tech companies colluding with the blue checkmark losers, and every day you would get up and it would be another punch in the gut. “Oh, America’s an awful place! America sucks.” I think that we are seeing a swing-back in a massive direction. Huge numbers of people who voted for Joe Biden already regret the fact that they did.

If the election were taking place right now, Donald Trump would win in a landslide, and the college football fan bases across America — I’m telling you — look at them. Turn on your television and look at what normal joy represents because that’s how we win. I know where Buck lives up in New York City, they’re asking for vaccine passports.

Where I live, in the real America, people are living their lives without fear, and they are showing up in massive numbers. It doesn’t matter whether you are a Big Ten fan, an SEC fan, an ACC fan, PAC-12, or Big 12, those stadiums were packed and Americans were sending a message: “We are declaring independence for covid. We refuse to live in fear any longer.”