(caveat that the new system is still very much experiencing its birth pangs and will almost certainly look and feel very different 5, 10, 20 years from today)

One of the vagaries of human psychology is a strong bias in favor of the status quo.

The status quo of college football pre-NIL and pre-immediate eligibility post-transfer created a LOT of damage for college athletes - but that damage was accepted as the cost of doing business and barely even discussed in major public sources.

The damage included: not being compensated fairly (or at all) despite being massive generators of revenue for their universities, not being able to freely transfer and be immediately eligible when blocked from playing time or when the coach moves on, being forced to sit out for a year when transferring.

This damage was barely recognized by most fans - but it was real and lasted for DECADES. Think of all the players from the 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s, and 10s who could've been set up financially when leaving college (whether they made it to the NFL or not) and who could've found a new, lucrative opportunity by a free transfer with immediate eligibility. Instead, wildly popular college athletes who never made it in a big way professionally - like an Aaron Craft at Ohio State or a Denard Robinson at Michigan or a Tommie Frazier at Nebraska - were not able to benefit financially at ALL despite bringing in millions and millions to their respective academic institutions.

The new system creates a different kind of damage - but in my opinion it is a preferable and less harmful kind of damage. It's the damage of fans feeling like they are just rooting for laundry because players are all free agents moving around. In my opinion, this new landscape creates a morally and ethically preferable damage to the type of damage we accepted as normal and natural for so many decades.