I respectfully disagree with you here. The first thing I got on my phone this morning was a text from a friend in D.C. who seemed to know more about what was going on than I did. He doesn't frequent message boards, use twitter and only rarely uses his facebook. This is the dominant topic of small talk even among people who aren't sports fans. This has the potential to be the leading story of the 10 o'clock news for weeks, with regular reporters- not just the sports guys covering this.
Unfortunately this is more than just us internet obsessed Hawkeye fans involved in this story right now. And we are the customers of the product that they put on the field, when they ask us to donate, come to I-club events, buy bowl packages, etc. they owe us explanations for things like this. It comes with the territory of Big Time College Sports.