Notre Dame football and FedEx Cup collide

And I thought one of the purposes of creating the FedEx Cup playoffs was to be able to compete with football, not get sidelined.  Jon Show sheds some light on the subject, and it doesn't look good for the Tour...

Scheduling conflicts will force the final two FedEx Cup playoff events to move up their time windows to accommodate NBC’s commitment to air Notre Dame home football games, which could further affect television ratings for events that will already suffer from the absence of Tiger Woods.

Golf ratings for tournaments generally increase as the television window stretches into early evening in the Eastern time zone. Weekend Nielsen ratings for nonmajors that Woods played in 2007, and missed this year due to injury, have dropped about 33 percent.

So instead of tuning in to the BMW Championship and Tour Championship at 3 p.m. on Saturday, viewers will have to deal with an extra early start at 12:30.