Do coaches leverage the "reporters" to pressure players and get around contact rules? Absolutely. That's another good reason to kill the contact rules.
Enhance, I was referring to the top 200 or so evaluations not being materially different than 20 years ago and that after that, the services aren't that great, even now.
I get you have a vested interest in the recruiting industrial complex, but of those "dozens" of people that you refer to, how many are talent evaluators versus marketing experts? I posted artivles another thread and can't pull it up on my phone, but basically, the average reporter at these sites makes less than $15k a year. It's a part time and often free lance gig. Few make a sustainable living doing evaluations. Most are treating it like beat reporters on the minor league baseball circuit treat it: a step toward a better reporting job.
There is of course an important distinction between consumer facing products like rivals, scout and ESPN and the coach facing products that focus on film production to enhance evaluation. The first are hardly used by the coaches, except to work around NCAA rules, as I mentioned before. The second have value, but they must be fretting over the NCAA lifting recruiting staff restrictions. There's a decent chance a large share of their market will start insourcing that work.