“It’s like he’s trying to lose.” That verdict from progressive YouTuber Jack Cocchiarella, picked up across American political commentary, captured the strategic oddity of a sitting president disparaging the most-watched sport in the country, in a state where it is a civic religion, roughly 36 hours before the polls open.

Trump was at the Five Flags Center in Dubuque on Sunday night, campaigning for Republican Senate candidate Ashley Hinson, when he launched into an unprompted monologue about the NFL’s dynamic kickoff rule, the format the league introduced ahead of the 2024 season to cut concussion rates on returns.

“I hate, I hate that new kickoff rule where you hit the ball and the people are standing there like a bunch of idiots,” he told the crowd.

“I start the game about 2 minutes in. I don’t want to watch the kickoff. I think it’s so disparaging.”

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Then the line that spread fastest online.

“Well, who the hell wants to watch football? It’s boring as hell.”

A closing argument against football, in Iowa

Trump went further and named local programs, telling the room: “Please don’t ever let Iowa, Iowa State, any of your colleges” follow the NFL’s kickoff change. The pitch landed in a state where Big Ten college football and Sunday NFL games sit at the center of weekly life.

The reaction online was immediate. In reactions collected by The Comeback, Ed Krassenstein called the remarks a “bold closing message for the heartland,” and film and TV producer Morgan J. Freeman noted that MAGA voters themselves love football. Writer James Surowiecki pointed to the NFL’s own numbers, noting there were more than a thousand more kickoff returns in 2025 under the new rules than in previous seasons. One widely shared post cited Nielsen data showing NFL broadcasts routinely take eight or nine of the week’s ten most-watched TV slots.

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A feud that goes back to 2016

Trump’s quarrel with the NFL is almost a decade old. It began on the 2016 campaign trail with his attacks on Colin Kaepernick’s anthem protests, and escalated in September 2017 when he called kneeling players “sons of bitches” at an Alabama rally and urged owners to fire them. That confrontation defined a season and sat at the center of the sports-politics flashpoints of his first term.

The dynamic kickoff is a newer target. The league has said the format cut the kickoff concussion rate by 43% in its first year while keeping the overall injury rate in line with other plays from scrimmage, and the owners have continued to tweak it since.

Polls close across Iowa on Tuesday, 3 November.

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