Voters give more credit to teams with high recruiting rankings. Kids are also influenced by recruiting class rankings, they can build momentum. I remember hearing a story about Urban Meyer (while he was at Florida) influencing a recruiting service to get a kid's ranking bumped. Why would he do that if it wasn’t worth his time? Years ago USC got a commit from some kid no one had heard of (I remember he was really undersized, he might have been 5-8 or something), he was a 3-star, but within days of committing to USC he was bumped to a 4-star. IIRC, USC was his only power conference offer.

I’ve seen similar movements with individual players over the years, it goes both ways. I feel like I’ve seen several BYU recruits get downgraded, post-commitment. Back in the old TBS days it got so ridiculous that subscribers would predict that after a kid committed to BYU his ranking would drop. One example was Marcus Matthews, he was originally given a four star ranking (Most fans knew he wasn’t a legitimate four star) but there was such a heavy pushback when he was downgraded, people were so sick and tired of it that they went directly to Brandon Huffman and called them (Scout) out. His ranking was put back to a four star.

Another thing that annoyed many was the performance of the teams that the regional scout.com directors covered. The old Washington Huskies guy and Huffman, their teams were terrible and their recruits always seemed to get preferential treatment in terms of their rankings.