To each his/her own - but with good marketing someone can easily bring pool back in to the mainstream. Golf is excessively boring to watch, but it was marketed correctly, became popular, and has become mainstream. The same could almost be said for bowling, fishing, hunting, or the myriad of other "sports" that get more airtime than pool. This is how it works, we just need someone to implement it:
No, pool is not exciting to watch for most people.
No, most people don't flock to pool rooms because it is the "in" thing to do.
However - if you tell people, and convince people that pool IS the thing to do and it IS exciting then they will flock to pool like sheep. That is how the masses think - they need someone to TELL them what is cool, what is popular, and where to spend their money.
Pool rooms filled up after The Color of Money, and why? Because that movie told people that it was cool to play pool. I'm just saying, that in my opinion, a very aggressive advertising and marketing campaign targeting new, young players is what is needed to revive the sport. Forget all about these failing ideas of bigger and better tournaments and concentrate on filling the pool rooms again. There will always be those that rise to the top, but having a larger pool of fish usually results in more "keepers".
You want more heroes of the game? You need to breed them from somewhere - and empty pool halls just won't cut it.
