i agree completely (with the OP). frankly, i prefer if someone is going to fight me, they do it at signings, not early - because of the reasons you described - it can cascade into several lost players.
i think changing considering credit would be my preferred solution (and i don't think its fair to say all but A prestige BCS schools would agree, by the way - that is absolutely not true in my experience - as an a+ prestige bcs school coach, i serve as an obvious counter example, but i think really high prestige BCS schools have just as much of a problem with this aspect of the system as anyone else). but i don't think you can do it in a vacuum. i would propose the following:
1) change the signing system. there are two options. first, you could bump signings out a day - for many of us, the last two days are annoying and a complete waste of time. second, my preferred solution (but its harder from an HD standpoint - but its what i'd do if i built my own sim from scratch) would be to allow recruits to sign when they do now, in sort of an "early signing period" sort of way - where many kids would not. for example, if you have a kid with 20k into them from one school, and only one school, sure, he can sign then. but if the school has 5k into him, he should wait. this would eliminate the cliff built into recruiting where you can poach at 7:59 and only have people find out about it after your entire class signs. it would also have other beneficial effects, helping to reduce the advantage of high prestige schools. promises could be included in this in a big way.
2) create a considering credit system that is not only more important than the system today, but different. the schools can each have a "loyalty bonus" which is a %. this would not increase considering credit directly, like i think it does today, but would serve as a multiplier. so, if you have 10k in the whole way, your loyalty bonus might rise to 20% after some time. the bonus would not kick in until 24 hours into recruiting for the folks who don't have immediate access (but if you don't have access for multiple days, you are going to be behind, which is already the case today). anyway, today you would only have 2k extra bonus, and then when you put like 50k more in later when someone jumps, i don't think you get a benefit on that 50k. to me, you should.
3) delayed recruiting information - i would eliminate the considering list updating regularly. it can update with WOTS. this is solving a different problem than the OPs in a way, but its related. i would prefer NOT to see who is considering who in the first cycle. today, you can't do any research into the player if hes decently high end, to decide who to focus on - the system is so entrenched in first-cycle actions being of the utmost importance. i'd prefer not to see an update at 2am either, wait until the 2nd day sometime. this allows people to get into recruits, do some exploration into their hidden qualities (you sort of have to do things like, make some guys care about promises more, care about different schools differently via mechanisms like distance preference and favorite schools, which could be more than 1 but maybe a list of several with varying importances or something, basically to make more variance in the recruits so there was more to figure out than just high high potentials, otherwise this time would kind of be a waste). once the first update came out, presumably, you'd have several people who had shown some interest in a given recruit. this would ESPECIALLY be true if there were true preferences like some guys might prefer dramatically to play away from home (enough to make up for distance advantage in money), or if some guys really needed starting promises and such - basically to bring more uncertainty into which recruits are going to which schools, and to open the possibility for a given recruit, as to which schools he might go to. today, you look at a guy, and its like ok, that guy is going to school A or school B, and you can often say that with 98% certainty. or worse, you can say, that guy is going to school A, with 95% certainty. that is totally unrealistic and i think its bad for recruiting in the game, too. that is the fundamental weakness in our current style of recruiting, IMO.
anyway, if you put those all together, it would bring more to recruiting than just the first couple cycles and the time around signings, which i think would be a very good thing. with updates to lists coming only ever 12 hours or so, it would make it a lot less demanding on coaches, to be checking in every cycle, which i think is a very good thing, too. it would increase competition for top recruits by opening them up to more schools. and it would force top schools to spend more on top recruits if they wanted to sign them ASAP, which would reduce their ability to poach considerably. those with strategies built around poaching, would be unable to sign all their guys right at signings, which would get rid of that aspect that so many of us don't like, where the game makes poaching SUCH a strong strategy, that it forces many to build their strategy around it + first cycle moves. i think the above changes would allow a much greater level of variety in recruiting strategy, which would be a very good thing. of course, recruit generation as it exists would still gum up the works considerably, but that is a bit of a different issue.
those are the positives i see... what are the negatives? i am never that good in seeing the negatives in a system i am overall fond of, which i guess is true for most people, but its definitely true for me.