When I first heard about the idea for a playoff system for the PGA tour, I pulled a Jim Mora: "PLAYOFFS?!?!? PLAYOFFS!!”"

It's not that I'm a traditionalist when it comes to sports. I welcome change when it is necessary, sensible, and adds to the overall enjoyment of the sport. Major League Baseball adding a wild card: love it for the excitement it brings to the end of the season. Overexpansion by pro sports leagues: hate it for the diminishing talent level and quality of games that comes from it.

Golf "playoffs?" It just doesn’t make sense to me. I know the idea was partially born out of a desire to draw bigger television audiences for the fall tournaments, but seriously, how many people do you think will flip the channel past football on two channels to watch a golf tournament? People I know who like golf more than most won’t even make that switch.

But I can deal with an enthusiastic effort by the PGA to try to grow its brand. What I can’t deal with is how misguided the system it chose to use for the playoff is.

The system is so flawed that two of the world’s best golfers, Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, have chosen not to play in events during the FedEx Cup, and both are in position to win the whole thing anyway because they entered the playoff run with a lot of "points" built up throughout the season.

Worse yet, come Sunday, there is a very real possibility that someone will win the final tournament of the playoffs and not win the overall championship. How does that make any sense?

It doesn’t, and in the interest of helping PGA commissioner Tim Finchem revamp the system, here’s one armchair caddy’s ideas to change for the better and really make the PGA playoffs work.

Eliminate points for the playoffs

I’m fine with having a points system during the regular season to help set the field for the playoffs. It makes sense that the players who accumulate the most points over the course of the season, whether by having moderate, sustained success in many events, or great success in fewer events (Tiger Woods), should be included in the championship chase.

What I really don’t think works is having those points carry over into the playoffs. Once you are in the playoff field, should your championship prospects be directly tied to whether you finished 36th or 37th in a tournament in April?

Golfers who enter the playoffs near the bottom of the pecking order need to place much better than golfers near the top of the list just to stick around. No other sport does this. Last year, the St. Louis Cardinals weren’t at an inherent, competitive disadvantage in the playoffs because they only had won 82 games in the regular season. They may have been slated to play tougher teams, but they didn’t have to sweep a series to advance. That is what low-tier FedEx Cup qualifiers are being asked to do.

Instead, the PGA could wipe the point slate clean at the start of the playoffs and run a four-tournament, 16-round aggregate score postseason. This way, the best, most consistent golfers are in the field, and it becomes mandatory for all golfers to compete in all tournaments. The Tour could still pare down the field by cutting after two weeks and again after the third. This would build drama into each week while still keeping the structure similar to what it is now.

Mega match play

Another option would be to take points earned during the first part of the season and rank players based on those totals. Take the top 144 players and set up a big match play tree.

There are really no negatives to this. Match play is the most exciting golf to watch, with more strategy and hole-by-hole drama than regular stroke play.

It would allow existing or budding one-on-one rivalries to emerge and more storylines to develop — both great things for the PGA.

Add to thisthe fact that it would give the American sports fan another opportunity to engage in his favorite past-time, filling out the playoff bracket (for entertainment purposes only, of course).

The PGA could brand it as the September Showdown, or something similar, and pump a lot of hype into it. Throw in some first round upsets that are destined to happen, and you have an event that could conceivably compete for a part of the NFL audience.

Once you got down to the final few rounds, you could have the primetime match play matchups that the PGA tried to build up years ago with those made-for-TV events featuring Woods and some other marquee golfers. This time, though, it would actually matter.

So there you have it. The PGA could have a winner-take-all tournament set up for this weekend that could draw part of the Sunday afternoon TV audience and get some attention during the week from the sports fan public. Instead, it has an event where a fifth-place finisher could coast through the finishing holes and end up cashing in on a $10 million FedEx Cup Championship prize.

Kind of a letdown.

Ben is a junior majoring in journalism and political science. Send him your thoughts on the FedEx Cup at [email protected].