The Fastest Candidate — Running for the White House

Rubio threw a football around during a recent trip to Iowa. (Al Drago/CQ Roll Call)

Posted August 28, 2015 at 12:05pm

Does anyone care to challenge Marco Rubio to a 40-yard dash?

“I’ll tell ya this: I’m the fastest person running for president,” the Republican presidential candidate and Florida senator said Friday in a radio interview. “The fastest I ever ran was a 4.65,” Rubio said. “I tore my ACL in 2006 and I rehabbed hard because I wanted to run that one more time. I think I hit like 4.68 at that age, but not now.”

Rubio was talking to a significantly quicker man, though CBS Sports Radio host Tiki Barber’s 40-yard dash time at the NFL combine was rather terrible for a running back.

Barber asked Rubio a mix of foreign affairs and sports questions, touching on U.S. policy with respect to Cuba and China. Rubio demonstrated he might have a fallback career in an NFL Network studio when asked about the prospects for his hometown Miami Dolphins in the upcoming season.

“They’re going to have a good year. I mean they’ve got real good vibes around that team, and yeah I think they’re going to surprise a lot of people this year,” Rubio said. “Ryan Tannehill has taken another step forward, they’ve got some talent around him now.”

“I think the big story in the AFC for the next year is going to be Indianapolis. I mean with Andrew Luck and the talent they’ve surrounded him with,” Rubio said. “And the Patriots are in our division, so you can have a good team but you could be blocked from the promised land by an even better team that’s standing in the way in your own conference.”

Rubio received football-related headlines during a recent presidential campaign swing through Iowa while tossing a go-route to a kid .

Barber could not let Rubio go without getting confirmation that the senator’s wife Jeanette Dousdebes was a Dolphins cheerleader.

“Yeah, but I met her before she was a cheerleader,” Rubio said. “It’s hard for me to accept that the only person in my family who has ever worked on an NFL field is my wife.”