A solid post, Corey, and certainly a reasonable argument. I strongly disagree with your analysis if you are including women's pro pool, which has had visionaries, good management, and steady growth for decades, and has helped lead to greater participation in pool among females. I would also disagree with your suggestion that pool hasn't had any visionaries with passion and extreme tolerance, but that's not the focus of my post.
Assuming your post relates to men's pro pool, I still disagree. Pro pool is a product, and to sell a product that hasn't sold as well as one would like, one has just two routes: a) modify the product, or b) develop the demand for the existing product. To me, there is only so much you can do with the product, and to me, debates over whether to play eight ball, nine ball, ten ball, single or double elimination, or on loose or tight pocket equipment are ultimately meaningless. It is for this reason that I feel that the only path to vitalizing pool is to develop the demand for the existing product.
Many of us on the forum have argued that the only path to building demand for the professional pool product is to get the kids invovled in the game. We can introduce the game in the schools and I certainly admire the superb efforts of the Billiard Education Foundation, but that won't be enough. I am among several on this forum that feels that we, in America, are failing miserably in getting the kids involved in the game, and I think its because our poolrooms are kid-unfriendly.
As I noted in a recent post:
sjm said:
.... making the poolroom kid-friendly is the real path to vitalizing the game we love. Others note that pool can be brought into the schools, but cleaning up the image of the poolroom may be necessary before parents and school administrators will buy into the idea.
To me, the presence of the gamblers who try to prey on anyone that walks through the door (in most poolrooms I've ever frequented) ensures that American parents will never have the comfort level with the pool scene to encourage their kids to spend a lot of time in poolrooms. Further damage is done by the the gambler, who is, far too often, dressed in a slovenly manner and is too inclined to be rude and profane, which diminshes the dignity of the poolroom. It is easy to overlook that this tends to scare away many adults, too, and particularly the financially well off, who will choose other leisure-time pursuits such as golf and will dissuade their kids from frequenting the pool room.
Yes, gambling is scaring away the very demographics that pool needs most to thrive, and will continue to do so as long as the predators continue to frequent and be welcomed in the poolrooms of America. This is a big part of the reason that the kids frequenting the pool halls are, so often, those with less education and modest financial means.
It has been discussed on the forum before that even when televised pool attains decent ratings, it attracts demographics that do not represent important consumer groups. That's because we continue to allow the poolroom to be the seedy place that it is and has been for a long time. As long as the poolroom scene remains unchanged, not too many kids will take up the game.
Making poolrooms kid-friendly is fundamental to reversing the disenfrachisement of critical demgraphics that pool needs to attract to thrive in the long-term.
To sum, my feeling is that even exemplary leadership and unity won't be nearly enough to produce significant growth in the game until we make pool a more kid-freindly game. Building demand for the pool product is, in my view, the only path to taking pro pool to the next level.
It's way to easy to assume that all we need is the right salesperson to get this sport rolling in America, but in trying economic times, we need to be wise enough to focus on getting more prople, and the right people, invlolved inthe game.
