The payoffs are the payoffs... stuff like that happens a lot, unfortunately. That's part of the reason I'm for paying players, so there's less incentive for kids to take money out of necessity and so we have more moral authority when we crack down on players who do take benefits.
But to me, the real advantage that the SEC gains in recruiting is the games it plays with recruiting restrictions. I haven't seen a recent updated, but at one point, there was a detailed report showing that SEC teams signed upwards of 20% more kids over a 4 year period than the average team from any other P5 conference. When you have a mentality of "more grist for the mill," of course you're going to (a) reduce the impact of standard attrition, and (b) withhold from other schools that oversigned talent or disrupt the development of talent that may eventually transfer to a non-SEC school.