The recruits are coming in too fast, and the services just can't keep up.

All 4 services have rated and matched with Ohio the first recruit, Walsh.  As for the other seven recruits, well....
1. ESPN has 3 as verbals, but hasn't rated any. They know 2 of the others exist, but have no entry for Mangen or Poling.
2. Scout.com has 2 as verbals, and has rated them. They have also rated 2 others, but haven't picked up the verbals. Again 2 of them are not in their database, for them it is Cope and Leavitt they don't know about.
3. Rivals has 3 as verbals, but only has rated one. They have three others in their database, and for them there is only one person not in the database, Alexander.
4. 247Sports has 2 verbals, both rated. They have 3 others in their database, and omit 3, Murdock, Bristol, and Mangen.

Obviously these guys don't compare their notes with the others this early. Each of the seven other recruits is totally omitted by someone, and the people they each have as verbals is different.  My general comment is that ESPN is usually the slowest in getting people rated, since they generally focus on rating the top players, and it takes them awhile to work down. Scout is the fastest to rate them, but they rate almost everyone a 2-star, so who cares. This is my first year watching 247Sports, but they seem a little behind the others.

It's not so much that we are afterthought - they just have a lot of kids to watch film on. I can't even imagine how much film there is. They start with lists of who they think the best players are, and work down. Ohio is typically recruiting high 2-star/low 3-star players. They will start with the 5 and 4 star players first, then work on the 3s, and finally the 2s. All players are reviewed based solely on their junior film.

Towards the end of the season, as in, between November and January, they try to look at Senior film of players, and re-rate them. They can't get to all the kids, I suspect, but they do re-rate some. Those are the ones where we see the ratings increases coming in (or decreases).

They actually all do a pretty good job of building a database of the entire player pool, but they do miss some, and they add those as they go. As for who notifies them of verbals, I'm not really sure. I always had the impression that the players themselves do. The players, however, may only notify one or two, not all four. At some point, though, the services pick up from each other. For example, this morning Scout was only showing two players, then suddenly they had the same four as ESPN. Did they pick them up from ESPN? Or did someone notify them? 

In any case, they do try to pick up the Ohio recruits. Each of them have been adding people every day, but they just are each getting about half of the players, so they are falling behind when the verbals come in this fast. It will all sort out in the end, though. In years past, some years they all have most all the recruits a few days before signing, while in other years they end up grabbing a bunch of names on signing day. When they get the name that late, they are never going to get reviewed, so they will get the minimum rating that each service gives, which is 2 stars from scout, 5.2 from rivals, and 4.5 from ESPN. I don't know about 247Sports, but I think their minimum is 70. Once in awhile they change it after that, but not often.

LOL - Of course the ratings need to be taken with a grain of salt. It's the process that I find amusing: watching them struggle to keep up, trying to out do each other, trying to rate 5-10,000 players, trying to get it done as fast as the offers go out, and trying to keep up on who is committed to whom. When you think about all they have to do, the fact that they keep up as well as they do is pretty amazing, and whatever accuracy their rating have is a bonus.

This is very interesting analysis, L.C.  It really makes a lot of sense because in the Knorr, PapaL, and Freak Nasty Eras we often had players who never lived up to their signing-day hype. Now, we see many players come into the program with little hype and then blossom into good to great players under the excellent tutelage of the coaching staff.  What you are saying is that some of that blossoming occurred in high when between their junior and senior years they improved and consequently increased their standing in the rating services.  

I think there are various things that can trigger a new evaluation on a player. I know that unusual activity or interest in a player can trigger it. For example, I remember a QB that Ohio was recruiting as a Safety. He was considered a 2-star QB, which was probably fair. Now, when Carl Pelini left for Nebraska, he caused Nebraska to offer the kid as a Safety as well. Then, Ohio A&M heard about it, looked at the guy again, this time as a Safety, and made an offer as well, which he accepted. At some point, with all this activity, the services looked at him again, not as a QB this time, but as a Safety, and moved him to 3 stars. 

Re-evaluations have also happened to Ohio recruits. I remember when Nwokocha was suddenly raised from 2 stars to 4 star, and I think T3 got a ratings bump up, too.

Hmm... A QB looked at as a safety? Ended up at OSU? Maybe ended up playing a bit of QB? 

I gots two guys in mind....