I always laugh when I hear people say, "Track/XC would be so much more popular if only a, b, c, was done."
Marketing could be certainly be improved but get over yourselves people. Team sports are more intesting on a regular basis.
Our sport has inherent core attributes that make it less popular than team sports on a regular basis. Our biggest events like the Olympics can be spectacular . Let me explain why:
Reason #1 is the fact that the "regular season" in track/xc means basically nothing.
The perfect example of that is how #1 Oklahoma State finishes #10 at Pre-Nats today and no one is talking about it. People are just assuming they held out there guys (is that true, I have no idea?).
In other sports, the regular season means something. In ours, it barely means anything. The same is true in road racing (few care for the most part what happens in a 10k or half-marathon before a marathon) and on the track (why DL meets are important a loss has little bearing on the bigger picture which is Worlds/Olympics).
Reason #2 is you can go to a track or cross country meet, watch the whole thing, and leave without knowing who won the team battle.
A cross country meet finishes and it often takes 30 minutes to figure out who won. It's not much easier in track as you need a score sheet with 20 events on it. At NCAAs in Des Moines a few years ago in track, I watched 3-4 locals leave the stadium ten minutes after it was over not knowing who won the team battle.
Now don't despair. There is some good news.
The fact that our regular season means little makes our championships that much more spectacular.
Notice above. I said, "Our sport has inherent core attributes that make it less popular than team sports on a regular basis." But on a non-regular basis, during our championships like the Olympics, our biggest events can be so spectacular as the drama/tension of training all year for this one moment or all your life for this one moment is captivating.
What say you?