Rory McIlroy slams ‘big five’ allegations, makes surprising NFL admission
PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — If you needed any proof of how quickly things can change on the PGA Tour, you only needed to look away from the screaming window Tuesday afternoon at Pebble Beach.
As the golf world settles in for the first event of the post-Super Bowl season, Pebble Beach settles into its flurry of early February weather. The beautiful, blue sky of an unusually calm morning quickly exploded into dark gray clouds, as the wind swelled hard enough to rattle the glass on the newly renovated Pebble Beach golf course.
This was the environment as Rory McIlroy entered the lectern to speak for the first time in the United States in 2026. The reigning Masters (and Pebble Pro-Am) champion arrived, as always, with a lineup of hot golf apparel to talk about — but this year the biggest one revolves around a rival league for its final NFL season. up the road from Pebble Beach in Santa Clara, California.
As in many years, the Super Bowl provided the golf world with a strong reminder of the NFL’s power over the American sports audience. But in contrast For many years, this year’s Super Bowl has come at a time of great interest in the NFL at PGA Tour headquarters, where former NFL executive Brian Rolapp is eyeing a change agenda to model the Tour after its football counterparts.
In the world floated by Rolapp, the Tour season may begin herein Pebble, the week after the Super Bowl – dedicates the early winter to football but says the spring and summer months as the overflow of the Tour program. That change would not happen everything that’s different for McIlroy, who usually starts his year by playing a few events in the Middle East as part of the DP World Tour, but it would mark a big change for the rest of the Tour, which normally starts just after the new year.
At Pebble, the question facing McIlroy was the same as the one facing the Tour in early 2026: How much should the NFL steal, and how much should the old PGA Tour keep?
But when McIlroy talked a lot about football, that’s when the deep confusion began: The guy who was given the job of being the messenger of the golf ball? He is not a football fan. Like everything.
“No, I think, yeah, the ball -,” McIlroy said, pausing. “I tried a lot with football. Like I tried a lot.”
“I can watch a cricket match for five days and be amazed,” McIlroy said. “I think it’s just – I didn’t grow up with it, that’s why I don’t take it naturally.”
Thankfully, McIlroy doesn’t need to appreciate the finer points of Cover 6 to see the beauty in Rolapp’s approach.
“I would appreciate it [the NFL],” McIlroy said. From a marketing standpoint it’s smart, right? They drip feed stuff. It’s the Combine, then the draft, then the preseason. It’s like OK, the season is short but it’s drip fed enough to really keep you interested all year long.”
Of course, part of the genius of the NFL is the spectacle of the Super Bowl, which resets advertising and TV viewership records with ease every February. The Super Bowl is one passing moment of the sports monoculture — the dominant, defining event that gives meaning to the entire NFL season.
The PGA Tour doesn’t have that, although it does have The Players Championship – a top-level event that falls directly under the majors. The Tour’s marketing department recently flirted with the idea of reviving the Players as a “top five” — a decision that no doubt pleased the Tour’s new investor class and Strategic Sports Group, but received a lukewarm response from the rest of the golf world. About McIlroy? You can fall into the latter camp.
“Look, I’d like to have seven majors instead of five, that sounds good,” McIlroy said with a chuckle. “But I’m a cultural person, I’m a historian of the game. We have four major championships. You know, if you want to see what the five major championships look like, look at the women’s game. I don’t know how well that goes for them.”
Yes, McIlroy admitted, the tension between the disruptors and the traditionalists is often a dominant theme in golf at the start of 2026. Often, there may be no “right” answers…not in this case.
“It’s the players. It shouldn’t be anything else,” McIlroy said. “As far as I can tell it has more of an identity than the PGA Championship at the time. So from an identity standpoint, I think The Players has hit the nail on the head. It stands on its own without a label, I think.”
Indeed, that may be the case as the golf world enters another game at Pebble Beach. But it may stay that way for a long time. Few things are done on the modern PGA Tour.
