measure them by team accomplishments that involve multiple classes of players, plus coaches and outside factors. I'm not saying that measure is the end-all measure. But in no way am I going to even start to think about figuring how to quantify such a thing through team accomplishments. It would be pointless.

You're right. It wasn't about individuals. It's about adding up the success of all of the individuals. And there's no way to do that without splitting it up over time.
Who cares about everyone from a class going to the NFL if they don't win games? Um, everyone would care about that. It would mean obviously the recruiting classes aren't the problem. Ever heard of Jim Mora? Raked in NFL talent left and right but HE was the problem.

There's the old chart that shows team success relative to recruiting rankings. Obviously teams like BYU and BSU are way up on the graph, and dozens of P5's are lower down. Obviously recruiting classes are "successful" for them. But there are more problems than that. They have talent. They have depth. They don't have the dozen other factors that come together to have really successful, winning seasons.

Whatever the answer may be, it's just impossible to give your approach much weight. That doesn't mean it doesn't matter. But it's not heavily weighted.