I agree with the above poster. Southern California could be a track and field Mecca. If you have ever gone to the State HS cross country meet, Mt SAC Invite, or State Track and Field meet you would see the level of support that cross country and track and field receives in SoCal. The problem is the marketing and the way the meets are run. No one wants to watch an 8 hour track meet, but no one wants to watch an 8 hour baskteball game or football game either. Imagine watching crappy football for 8-12 hours straight. No one wants to do that. Track meets consistently put on long crappy track meets that I wouldn;t even want to sit through, let alone the casual fan.
I have always dreamed of creating a professional league as stated by one of the above posters. Cities have teams and draft runners out of college. This idea would obviously cost a lot of money but is a dream of mine none the less.
Another idea is to incorporate gambling into track and field. This would make it one of the most popular sports in America but would obviously have negative effects as well.
If we could get more exposure and people knew what was going on, the sport would be a huge success. We are rarelly on tv anymore, never on SportsCenter, rarelly even in the newspaper! The marketing has to be better.
Something has to be done and can be done to increase the popularity and spark the interest of t&f/distance running.