equal time Phil Mushnick PGA Tour’s dubious ‘fifth major’ is really just another con job By Phil Mushnick Published March 14, 2026, 5:15 p.m. ET Xander Schauffele and Ludvig Aberg talk on the first tee during the third round of THE PLAYERS Championship golf tournament. Jeff Romance-Imagn Images Several years before NBC landed on the idea to try to make the onetime criminal/Crips associate/rapper Snoop Dogg synonymous with the Olympics — a desperate attempt to lure viewers who didn’t much care for the Olympics as an athletic competition — “The Simpsons” beat them to that punch.
The venerable cartoon show, steeped in brilliant social satire, introduced a character named “Poochie” — a sunglasses-wearing, surfboard-schlepping, cap-backward, attitude-enriched beach bum dog — and a genius mockery of TV shows desperate to reverse their decline.
Poochie was designed to be seen as a lame, last-chance attempt to stave off a network’s cancellation of a played-out show. He may have been inspired by “The Flintstones’ ” last-gasp addition of The Great Gazoo.
This weekend’s Players Championship, an annual big-dough PGA Tour event, has for the past few years been promoted as golf’s “fifth major” — a claim that few have swallowed. It’s the transparent and persistent fantasy of only one party — NBC, owner of the event’s rights.
