Trump turned a stump speech in Dubuque into a monologue about football rules on Sunday night, pleading with the NFL to scrap the kickoff format it adopted in 2024.
“Who the hell wants to watch football? It’s boring as hell. And I hate, I hate that new kickoff rule where you hit the ball and the people are standing there like a bunch of idiots,” Trump told the crowd at the Five Flags Center, according to Yahoo Sports.
The president was in Iowa to campaign for Republican Senate candidate Ashley Hinson, 36 hours before polls opened for the midterms.
What the rule actually does
The dynamic kickoff was introduced by the NFL in 2024 and made permanent by owners this year. Ten kicking-team players line up on the receiving team’s 40-yard line and the receiving team sets at least seven blockers in a zone between its own 35 and 30. Everyone except the kicker and the two returners is frozen until the ball hits a player, hits the ground, or crosses into the end zone.
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The format was designed to compress distance, slow the sprint-up and keep the kickoff from becoming a glorified touchback.
The data Trump left out
The league says it has worked. The NFL reported a 17% drop in concussions in the 2024 regular season versus 2023, and a 43% reduction in the kickoff concussion rate compared with the 2021-2023 average, as Poynter laid out in a review of the data. Returns rose 57% in the 2024 regular season, and early 2025 figures showed nearly 77% of kickoffs returned in the first two weeks of play, the highest rate since 2010.
Trump has rejected that case repeatedly. He has called the format “sissy football” on Truth Social and told the Dubuque rally the rule is “so unglamorous” and “doesn’t help people.”
A second-term pattern
The president has made American sports a recurring front since returning to the White House. Just over a week before the Dubuque speech, Trump used a separate rally to call for a boycott of the WNBA and attack LeBron James, after players from the Golden State Valkyries and the Atlanta Dream left the court during the national anthem before games of the WNBA Finals.
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Sunday’s monologue extended the fight to college football, too. Trump urged Iowa and Iowa State not to copy the professional format. The college game still uses the traditional kickoff.
The NFL has not responded to the Dubuque remarks. Kansas City Chiefs special teams coordinator Dave Toub addressed Trump’s earlier criticism of the same rule last November, telling reporters that the president “has no idea what’s going on with the kickoff rule.”
Polls across the United States close on Tuesday evening local time.
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