I miss the very early days of these rankings (whatever the iteration was before what is now called Rivals, pre-247). Back then it seemed that much more credence was given to which schools were recruiting players. As time progressed, the sites hired their own talent evaluators. Not that that was a bad thing but which schools target players isn’t irrelevant.
l always felt the wheels came off for Mack Brown when he started to pay more attention to the recruiting rankings rather than his staff’s own evaluations. Ditto for Jimbo Fisher. But if you want to have a top ranked class through the lens of the recruiting services, then those rankings are important.