This.
Saban saw the writing on the wall. It's fairly easy to make an easy run for a championship every year when your entire team is made up of 5 star players and everyone else's talent level doesn't come anywhere close. Avoid any real OOC matchups, crush the weak SEC teams that you've gotten your ESPN media buddies to talk up into legitimate/ranked/whatever, and win your 1 or at most 2 tough games a year. Done. With the portal and NIL upping the talent level across the board? Yeah, you're not going to see ultra dominant teams anymore in the college game. You might get one for a single season, but establishing a dominant program that just repeats over and over? Especially now that there's an actual playoff? Good luck.
I'm honestly surprised we haven't seen more of this type of shit. These players are King Shit of their high schools. They have major D1 programs fighting over them making them the Belle of the Ball. Then they become King Shit at college. Except now they're actually getting paid real money to play. And there aren't too many (if any) college coaches that are going to risk losing games by enforcing discipline. If you're making $5+ mill a year to make it to the playoffs and win titles, that's a lot to risk by suspending your best player(s). Oh, and now there are other teams happy to pay them NIL money as well and take them off your hands if you piss the little princes off.