The sad attempts by Abdul El-Sayed's – the diminutive Democrat candidate who wants to be Michigan's next U.S. Senator – to portray himself as a normal, everyday dude are going off the rails left and right.

There's his buddy-buddy routine with the terrorist-adjacent podcaster Hasan Piker, the Muslim-American who once said the United States deserved the 9/11 attacks and has continued to double-down on that assertion. There's not a real American man out there who wouldn't throw down with El-Sayed's bestie Piker to disabuse him of such a notion.

And then there was El-Sayed's embarrassing botch about college football – a topic that Michigan voters take very seriously. With the college football season starting in just a few days, he thought he'd cleverly take a shot at Vice President JD Vance – El-Sayed is creepily obsessed with the entire Vance family – by commenting in an NBC interview that he was "excited" about the college football season getting underway and particularly about beating "Ohio."

Our friend Larry O'Connor from RedState's sister site, Townhall, a Michigan native, threw the yellow flag on that one. It's "Ohio State," noted Larry, not "Ohio." And everyone in Michigan knows that (except for Abdul El-Sayed apparently).

“Well, I’ll tell you what I’m excited about. All right, it’s about to be football season, and you mentioned Ohio for some reason in this interview, and I can’t wait to beat Ohio.

And let’s just remember, J.D. Vance — Ohio J.D. Vance, Peter Thiel J.D. Vance — is coming to Michigan next week. They are putting a spotlight on this campaign for a reason.”

Right on cue, Mike Rogers, the Republican candidate for the Senate seat, dropped a commercial absolutely slamming El-Sayed for once calling football "racist, sexist, and dominated by toxic masculinity," and noting that the Democrat socialist "thinks football is bad, but men playing women’s sports is good."

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In a brilliant twist, Rogers wore a University of Michigan football jacket and his wife, Kristi, wore a Michigan State t-shirt.

My dad was a football coach at Redford Union. I played football all through high school. On the gridiron, I learned about teamwork and toughness.

Abdul, well, he says football is racist, sexist, and dominated by toxic masculinity.

So let’s get this straight. Abdul thinks football is bad, but men playing women’s sports is good.

That’s just not who we are in Michigan.

I’m Mike Rogers, and I approve this message.

Common sense versus crazy. That’s Michigan’s choice.

There’s an old rule in politics that voters tend to gravitate toward the candidate they’d rather sit down and have a beer with. In Michigan, you can probably narrow that down even further: Who would you rather sit next to at the bar on a fall Saturday and talk college football with?

Mike Rogers looks like he could hold his own through four quarters, a couple of beers, and a heated Michigan-Michigan State argument. Abdul El-Sayed looks like he’d lecture you on toxic masculinity before accidentally calling Ohio State “Ohio” again.

That may sound trivial, but elections are often decided on exactly that kind of gut feeling. And right now, one of these guys looks a whole lot more like Michigan than the other.