Very much agree with this, although I'll say that the college football player community is not a monolith, and different guys choose for different reasons, but to think that the NIL is the creating this rift is naivety. IMO, it's pretty simple. Money changes everything and the more more money you insert into a system, the more it changes. As college sports has increased in popularity throughout the decades after WWII, the way audiences consume the sport and the money involved have changed. Now, a bunch of old white guys tried to keep the money from disseminating into the overall system as best they could, but eventually, everything comes out in the wash and the volcano exploded to some degree.
College football is in transition, not because of these rule changes, but because the problems and issues they had necessitated change. Change happens slowly with most systems and that's what you're seeing now. A 12-16 team playoff would much more enjoyable as upsets would be more prevalent and folks feel a true gauntlet was run with 3-4 games rather than 2. It'll get there, give it time, but the system right now certainly isn't optimal. The Bowl model can go the way of the NIT.