I have no real wisdom on this, but it seems to me that several things are evident [out of which one would build a hypothesis]:
1). These "services" are businesses. They are ,therefore, trying to produce a product which someone will buy. They have only two potential customers: a). football lovers wanting "insider" information; and b). football programs wanting something which might help their recruiting process.
2). The actual football programs probably don't pay much if any attention to these services. Frank Beamer's staff told me and my brother that they don't pay any attention to them at all. This makes sense in every conceivable way. The coaching staffs are seriously involved professionals who are usually good at talent-evaluation and who would never trust an "outside" scout [as that would be what these people represent] to make any of their conclusions for them.
I believe that there would only be two ways that the recruiting services could influence college teams: a). once in a Blue Moon an assistant coach might hear about some player first by reading something there, or more likely read that some power program is recruiting someone off their radar; or b). occasionally have to answer an irritating and ignorant question from some reporter as to why the team is not recruiting some high-star player, or did recruit a low-star one. [We have people post on this board who present such "objections" all the time].
3). This leaves the "function" of these businesses as "entertainment" not "science", as they go about constructing their fantasy ratings for public consumption. Since they are in competition with one another [just like the myriad pre-season football magazines], it is incumbent upon them to produce a ratings list which at least seems vaguely in concert with reality. But, with thousands of athletes out there, how to do it?
Every ratings service must have an unpublished [deliberately in-house] procedure that they pursue every year. It must include elements which have worked for them in the past [i.e. have created ratings lists which people are willing to take seriously --- not coaching staffs, just media people and "us"]. Those lists must result in SOME correlation to who actually gets signed by power programs and who [lesser so] ultimately succeeds in actual college and pro play.
The first criterion is more important for the ratings services than the second, as it is the only one which the public will actually remember. To accomplish that, these services must do two things: a). watch the power programs very carefully. WHO is recruiting WHO? Realizing this shows us that the relationship between the rating services and the college teams is exactly the opposite of what some think: It is the staffs who "create" the ratings systems lists, not the lists which create the staff recruiting targets. This is the only reason why rating service stars somewhat relate to team success --- it is the staffs of those programs who have actually done the "rating" within their own war-rooms, not the services.
And, to supplement that: b). be established in all the HS "hot-bed" areas so as to be able to talk to coaches [and even local media] of power football-factory programs about who's good, and who is recruiting them early. This is where having your employees scattered about like a major league baseball team used to do comes in. Each one of these "scouts" may even have a regional quota to deliver. Naturally this system of product production will leave historically less athlete-producing areas unrecognized.
Soft hypothetical addition: once certain already-being-recruited players are targeted, certain "measurables" are then added in a standard description of the player, and certain amounts of deductive BS added ["this player reminds me of X", etc]. Voila!! We have a pseudo-scientific product, they sell advertising, everyone begins analyzing and arguing about it interminably, and people become either happy as clams or mad as h*ll over something that is actually meaningless to real football staffs.
Well, OK, maybe I don't know what I'm talking about.
