Tiger Woods vs. NFL

The Chicago Tribune reports that Tiger Woods is making the PGA Tour and the FedEx Cup meaningful during a time when the NFL is dominant. This past weekend Tiger Woods won the BMW Championship, which is the third of the four FedEx Cup tournaments and took over the FedEx points lead. This tournament came at the same time as the opening weekend of the NFL and the ratings were surprisingly respectable.

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 Even if Tiger Woods doesn't pocket the $10 million bonus for winning the FedEx Cup, they should give it to him anyway. He is carrying this thing.

The power of Tiger was revealed again Monday when the TV ratings came out for the BMW Championship. Sunday's final round did a 3.2 national rating on NBC; one national ratings point is worth more than 1 million households.

That wasn't as high as the 4.0 NBC had done for the last round of the previous FedEx Cup event, the Deutsche Bank Championship. But that tournament didn't have to go up against the NFL, and it had the drawing power of Woods battling Phil Mickelson down the stretch.

Still, Sunday's 3.2 rating was significantly higher than the 2.1 for the final round of the first playoff tournament, The Barclays, in which Mickelson was in contention with Woods sitting out.

For the final 30 minutes, the BMW did a 5.0 national rating, a decent number considering the competition.

Locally, the Bears obviously ruled, doing a 26.9 rating on WFLD-Ch. 32; one local ratings point is worth 34,550 households. But at the same time, golf ranked second in the market from 3-5 p.m. with a 4.2 rating. The tournament actually picked up viewers down stretch, peaking at a 6.9 rating in the final 15 minutes.

Woods, obviously, was the draw on television as he was on the course, accounting for the big crowds at Cog Hill over the weekend. Try to imagine where the FedEx Cup would be without him.

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