How to simplify the Fed Ex Cup so us dullards can understand it

The Fed Ex Cup is confusing to everyone, from the players down to the fans. The only ones who understand it are Tim Finchem and his accounting team. These are the guys who play the stock market and know all about annuities, stock options and balloon payments. They invented them.

You were expecting a simple plan?

Still, I feel a little sympathy toward Finchem because it is necessarily intricate. This isn’t an eight, ten or even 20-team playoff. They start off with 144 players and had to come up with some way of eliminating them. I can’t imagine what the leaderboards will look like.

Finchem has insisted he will tweak the system after the first year if someone comes up with a viable system.

So here are some suggestions of how to simplify it.

First of all, get rid of the name. It cheapens it. It sounds like some obscure tournament no one pays much attention to, like the John Deere Classic. Corporate branding is all over the place now, but even the big three sports don’t sully their ultimate championships with cluttered brand names – you have the Super Bowl, World Series and NBA Championships.

The system is at least partially designed to keep the top players in sight of the public at the end of the season, which Tiger Woods immediately made a mockery of. Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with a guy skipping a tournament if he has the points to do it, but if you want to see the top names four straight weeks, even paired with each other, tell them they have to play.

Make every Cup tournament mandatory. Problem solved.

Some have suggested match play – nyet. You might have two guys at the end, Tiger and some unknown, and Tiger winning by 10 strokes. Where’s the drama? This ain’t Europe.

Now, about the $10 million top prize. The PGA Tour has been hyping this endlessly, but it turns out it’s semi-bogus.

What a lot of people may not know, as our own, hard-nosed investigative reporter Chris Baldwin has pointed out is that money goes into a retirement fund. The winner has the option to invest it but can’t get his hands on it until he is between 45 and 60, depending on yet another complicated formula.

This is bullspit. They’re pumping up this deal – give the guy the damn money with no strings attached. Follow him with a camera as he buys a bottle of Johnny Walker red and picks up cheap women. Imagine if John Daly won it.

These are only a few suggestions. As the “playoffs” continue, I’m sure my computer-like brain will come up with more. Your suggestions are welcome, even if they’re stupid.