"Despite all the number-crunching involved at the end, the FedExCup is not that hard to understand."

Doug Ferguson had me while making his FedExCup defense...until that sentence.

There were so many possibilities in the final hour that eight players were still in the running for the $10 million prize, six of them based on the shots they hit, two of them based on math.

Is it a farce that Simpson could finish 20th and still win the FedExCup? No more than when David Duval had to finish 24th at the TOUR Championship by Coca-Cola in 1998 to win the PGA TOUR money title, or when Vijay Singh had to finish in a two-way tie for third in 2003 to win the money title.

The TOUR Championship by Coca-Cola never had much drama to begin with. Duval once referred to it as an All-Star game, and that's about what it was. Most years, Woods had already wrapped up the money title before East Lake.

Now we have a FedExCup, which delivers four tournaments of all the best players in the month after the PGA Championship, compared with the old days -- a calendar full of events that hardly any of the best played.

For golf fans, what's not to like about that?

What bothers me about this analysis, while well thought out and articulated, suggests that golf should just accept mediocrity. I come from the view that a sport rich in formats and possibilities has the makings of something fun to watch, but isn't quite fulfilling its promise.