The Rivals acquisition of Alliance is the only reason they still exist at all. They purchased a bundled base of loyal fucks they could drop their national perspective on top of. Heckman built the damn thing to collect ad revenue, (which he did again with Scout before selling it off) and the national perspective has always been about driving click traffic. They've attempted to co-opt many different revenue models, including the adidas partnership, pay to camp, elite camp, etc. all while using the actual revenue drivers, the team sites, as cheap labor.
There are really decent Rivals team sites out there that have their own sources and push their own content. Ketch is a garbage human and can't help himself but to feed the beast, so OBs is unfortunately not an example of a stellar Rivals site. The major issue Rivals will have to confront will be adding subs, which the national group hasn't paid attention to in too long. Recruiting content is all about rankings, insider info, and video highlights. Rivals has decided that they want to offer counter culture rankings (see ad revenue), limit their insiders to regional (as opposed to by school), and try to do the rest with camps. Miscalculation, you stupid fucks. How do camps add revenue to team sites? You know, the lifeblood of your business? They don't.
The team site subscriber base is going to take a hit when they age out of caring. Go look around OBs at the active poster "Member since" date. '02, '03.... And they don't have the backing of a CBS type. Yahoo isn't throwing money around anymore. If they were really smart, they would go buy up one of these recruiting analytics startups and begin incorporating data. Hell, even SI is putting out a superior recruiting product right now which is run by one guy in a closet somewhere, cranking through video and doing real rankings and real work.
All of this to opine that Rivals will never be a legitimate site for national information. You're at the mercy of your team site, and if you attempt to look beyond that, you're just feeding the click machine.