Is it? The business model also includes eyeballs on Tuesday night MACtion. I can honestly say I didn't watch a single one of those games this year. Maybe I'm the minority. College football rosters have always been unbalanced. So it's not simply the fact that there isn't parity that turns me off. The appeal of the mid major is putting all the pieces together in one year. A mismash MAC champ of former P5 guys who couldn't quite cut it, and underclassmen looking to use it as a stepping stone, meh. And I'm saying this fully aware that the best MSU player, perhaps since Charles Rogers, is a one year transfer rental.
I mean, you probably didn't not watch MACtion because of the roster mish-mash or whatnot. You don't watch it because you're busy and don't really care about Mid-Major football.
And that's just what it is. Mid-Major football is incredibly niche and TV filler. People in DeKalb most of the time don't care about mid-major football. If the kid is good enough to be better than the MAC (maybe, maybe not), it's better for the sport if he's good at IU than if he's very good at NIU. Maybe if he's GREAT, it's a different story, but the top rusher in the nation is in the MAC, and none of us even knew. (I suppose there's he risk of going up and being bad, but them's the breaks)
The flip side is that lamenting a Mid-Major which is young guys who might move up and P5 guys who couldn't cut it is a very particular taste. In truth, if a Mid-Major has that one year, and it has some names where you say, "Oh yeah, I remember him," that's probably better for the business.
I remember thinking about this with Mike Daum, former basketball stats machine at SD State. He had the chance to move up, decided to stay put, got some love for sticking with his squad. The next year, the biggest games he played in were against Memphis and Tulane. Summit League teams are barely on TV. Then SD state got upset in the conference tournament game, and he was an All-American that no one saw. It was a nice story that he stayed with his guys, but it would've been better for the sport if, assuming his 25 and 11 sort of translated, he'd been a notable player in a Big Ten front court.