Having avoided writing about this for several days, I had absolutely no clue how to begin this, an obligatory piece on a tiresome subject.  But then I ran into a club professional friend on Thursday afternoon, and before I could say much beyond “Hello,” he asked, very simply, “Does anyone care about the FedEx Cup?”

Of course, there’s a fundamental (and generally overlooked) truth about the PGA Tour’s decision to build its business model after the culturally not-so-analogous sport of stock car racing:

The FedEx Cup was a resounding success before its first spine-tingling shot was ever struck.

Why?

Because few people keep their eye on the sparrow more effectively than Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem.  This, after all, is a man who spearheaded the creation of the World Golf Championship events – not because there was any great need to drag international stars to America any more often, but rather to quell any rumblings about the creation of a world tour.  

The FedEx Cup is little different.  A former economic advisor to President Jimmy Carter, Finchem more than understands that from a competitive perspective, the FedEx Cup serves no meaningful purpose.  In a game dominated by four time-honored Major championships, it is historically irrelevant and will likely remain so, regardless of how many promotional dollars the Tour throws at it.  Indeed, I suspect that history will far better recall Rocco Mediate for losing the U.S. Open that it will whomever holds up the vaunted cup next month at East Lake.

But that was never the point.

The FedEx Cup was, in fact, a really brilliant idea because it served a vital purpose.  Conceived during 2005, it was hatched as a bargaining chip for dealing with the major American TV networks as yet another massive broadcasting contract was set to expire.  At the time, golf’s TV ratings were on the decline, and the rumblings were loud that the days of jacking the networks for ever more money were fast coming to a close.  So Finchem and his administrative cast of thousands devised their “playoffs” – or, more accurately, decided that where money was concerned, stock car racing was an ideal role model for the PGA Tour.

The results, we should note, were not altogether perfect.  ABC/ESPN saw through the ruse (or simply found the Tour’s increasingly dull product a bad investment at any price) and walked away outright.  With the other networks picking up the slack, this may not have affected week-to-week broadcasts too much (save for those who’d fallen in love with ABC’s inspired Nick Faldo-Paul Azinger broadcast pairing) but it does figure to prove a crucial negative in one harder-to-define way.  With ABC/ESPN out of the equation, the Tour’s placement on Sportscenter, the sports information vehicle of modern American society, will inevitably slide – and it’s going to be difficult for Finchem to reach his goal of competing with this nation’s major sports if his standard weekly events are garnering only brief mentions in Sportscenter’s 28th minute.

But this little hiccup notwithstanding, the FedEx Cup achieved Finchem’s fundamental goal, because despite little logical reason to do so, CBS and NBC indeed broke the bank and shelled out record money for a new broadcast deal.  This remarkable achievement on the Commissioner’s part kept his bosses – the PGA Tour players – a happy bunch.

The manifest silliness of a golfing “playoff,” after all, is of little interest to them.  When it comes to judging their Commissioner, they simply see four consecutive seven million dollar purses in August and September and know they’ve got the right man for the job.