For sure. I mean, just last year they offered Bayless to basically pick his salary to stay and he still left. Those guys that are driving controversy which equates to outrage, eyeballs and clicks tuning in on TV, radio and social media. No matter how much sports fans say they dislike it, they're still posting/retweeting, listening and watching it.
It's a lot like our situation within the athletics landscape. You have all of these people that claim they don't like Indiana (or Steven A Smith) and are die hard Indiana State (or Andy Katz) fans but when you look on Twitter, you see these people with their IU avatars, following IU accounts or talking about how IU played last night on Facebook. Then every once in awhile, you'll see them post something about ISU, check in here and drop a post and then disappear back to what they "dislike." Its fake outrage when they are really soaking up that TMZ-level bullshit.
Look at how few active members we have here compared to the 5-6 Indiana discussion forums -- InsideIndiana, Peegs, BtownBanners, InsideTheHall, TheHoosier... even their small boards have more posts than we've had here in a decade. This is also why "lesser" conferences don't get media deals or get pushed off to streaming-only services and it all just snowballs and the divide grows even larger.