My thoughts on this little debate are as follows:
I think there are those juniors who have regularly stood out among most others (obviously, with the amount of high schools in the country, you cannot fairly evaluate each one but I digress). I feel the recruiting services begin their evaluations with these players. Then, I would hope, the "top prospects" compete against each other in camps/tourneys and are re-evaluated and moved up/down the lists accordingly (and again after their senior season). I don't believe one way is better than the other. I feel a combination should be used to fairly "rate" a prospect. As we all know, none of this matters anyways because once in college, star ratings become irrelevant.
That would truly be a great system for working out an accurate ranking, but I don't think it's there yet. The services currently don't like to move players up or down in ranking, and when they do, it's not by much. Why? Because inherent in such tweaking is an admission that the services didn't get it right the first time. (Credit to GITF for this theory)
To think that it's even possible to accurately rate hundreds of high school athletes on a first try is absurd, but the services seem to think that's what's expected of them.
I, for one, just want the most accurate ranking system possible. The more accurate the system, the more likely I am to pay attention to it and potentially pay to read about it.
Greenberry's rank as the 84th WR may have been justified based on his measurables and high school production to date. His stock has justifiably risen with each dominant tourney appearance against top competition; but the services still haven't adjusted his ranking accordingly because moving him to the top quickly might make them look stupid. (I personally think they look corrupt/ incompetent
without moving him to top quickly, but maybe that's just me.)
Hopefully we're moving toward a system where little weight is placed on initial ratings, and regular ranking adjustments occur after major AA games and 7ON tourneys.