Oh I've thought about it a lot, because it always makes me laugh when people bring up the topic of our conference really holding us back in recruiting.
What you are doing is thinking about how much you, as a fan, hate watching us play our conference schedule, and how much you, as a fan, would like playing a much better conference schedule.
You then decide that high level high school basketball players have the same mentality, despite there not being much evidence at all to support it.
So again, I'm happy to believe recruits really, really care about conference, I would just need to see some actual consistent evidence of it.
Not sure why you're even bringing up TV, exposure is obviously important, much more important than conference. Good thing we're on national TV all the time.
And thanks for letting me know about the money, I'm sure a lot of recruits pick a school based upon the value of it's TV contract.