Here’s what’s wrong with the FedEx Cup playoffs: Of the 124 players who made the playoffs, 87 will move on to the second round regardless of their finish this week. That’s not so much a playoff as a procession.

Of course, there’ll be some jockeying for position. A higher finish puts a player in better position for the event two weeks from now. Players outside the ten or so need to finish high to have a chance, points wise to win the big prize.

There also are some big name players on the outside looking in. But there’s just not enough uncertainty. I think it’s uncertainty that makes playoffs in other sports so potent. Once the playoffs begin in football and baseball, any team could make a run.

With the FedEx Cup, it’s already possible to project who will be in the Top 30. According to the PGA Tour website, Nick Watney, Steve Stricker, Webb Simpson, Luke Donald, Keegan Bradley, Phil Mickelson, K.J. Choi, and Bubba Watson are locks. That’s like saying that the Pittsburgh Steelers are automatically in the playoffs—regardless of what they do—and the other teams are playing for the remaining spot.

I’d like to see a fifty percent attrition rate in each round of the playoffs—and a point system geared to ensure that only the top ten automatically move on to the next round. Further, we shouldn’t know who’ll be in the final field until the week before.

For the curious, a chart of which players automatically progress—and how high the others have to finish to move on—follows:

The Barclays currently is the first leg of the PGA Tour’s FedEx Cup Playoff Series. Held this year at the Ridgewood Country Club in Paramus, New Jersey, the tournament is open to the top 125 FedEx Cup points leaders following the Wyndham Championship the previous week. Following this tournament, the new points are allocated (five times that of a regular tournament) and the new top 100 will go on to round two at the Deutsche Bank Championship.

The tournament moves to the Plainfield, New Jersey, Country Club in 2011, and may return to its original home in Westchester New York in 2012.

The Barclays began in 1967 as the Westchester Classic. It was held at the Westchester Country Club in Rye, New York from 1967 to 2007. The site was so well known that even as the sponsors changed, it was just known as “The Westchester.”

The Westchester’s traditional spot was either the week before (even years) or the week after (odd years) the US Open. It was relocated on the calendar in 2007 in the great FedEx Cup shakeup.

Vijay Singh has won the event four times.

The players tee off between 9 am and 11:20 am, but NBC’s coverage runs from 1:30 to 6 pm. The Golf Channel covers the event from 11:30 to 1:30. So the whole thing apparently will be on tape delay.

Not worth watching unless its live, IMHO.

The good news about this year’s FedEx Cup is that no one is a lock to win. That actually makes the final round interesting. The downside is that the end-game is so complicated that the Tour had to create a series of charts to explain it all. You can see them here.

The short version is as follows:

• If Furyk, Retief Goosen or Geoff Ogilvy wins the event, he will win the FedExCup if Charley Hoffman and Paul Casey finish outside of the top three
• If Luke Donald wins the event, he wins the FedExCup
• If Casey or Hoffman wins the event, he wins the FedExCup, regardless of how anybody else finishes

A divorce on the one hand and inconsistent play on the other hasn’t stopped Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson from sharing the lead for the oddsmakers at 12/1 for the Barclays Championship. I’m actually having a hard time figuring out the oddsmakers fascination with these two characters. Aside from Mickelson’s Masters’ victory, neither has done a thing to merit their consistent location at the top of the list.

Odds for the 2010 Barclays follows, courtesy of Bodog, the world’s largest betting destination.

It is somehow fitting that while Phil Mickelson won the Tour Championship, Tiger Woods still was the big winner.

Thanks to the points system devised by the Tour, if Tiger finished second, no one out of the top five could win the FedEx Cup. Phil, who began the weekend in fourteenth place did what he had to do. But Tiger sealed the deal with the second.

In some ways, it’s a microcosm of the way Phil Mickelson’s career has gone. I’m convinced that absent Tiger, Phil would have been the dominant force on the Tour over the last ten years. With Tiger ...