I for one find cancer research much more fascinating, there are always new surprises and twists to learn and discover. With a football game, we already know the rules, the outcomes are not all that diverse, and people have been playing the same kind of game for ages, I get bored really fast.

Maybe there are some ways to make it more entertaining? http://eterna.cmu.edu/ , google image labelling and other "gamified work" projects come to mind.

Or a slightly more weird way to put it... we make a big show of music auditions where millions of people get super-excited and spend money to vote on a person they will most likely never see again in their lives. How do we get people that excited about science?