You're fooling yourself if you think every case is the same. The fact that you think these different scenarios never play out this way...

Players really do shut their recruitment down. Like totally shut it down. Schools may want to offer but you're not going to hear about it. Some schools don't offer because of missions. It happens. They'll tell a kid hey we only want you now, so if you're not a mission guy, you've got an offer.
And yes, some schools do think it is a waste of time, depending on other options, timing etc. It may not happen much but it can. It's not a "does NOT happen" kind of thing.

You also have a kid gets that offer and the school stops recruiting them. So we see it reported and only pay attention to what is on paper when the real "offer" isn't necessarily there anymore. Just saying the whole thing with reported offers or not doesn't mean much for this staff.

Maybe you're under the impression that a lot of fans are using this as an excuse for when some BYU commits don't get offers. Maybe some will use that too much, but sometimes it's legit.