Though I am slightly younger, I think I qualify as a contemporary of Steve Prefontaine. I am Craig Virgin's age, 4 years younger than Pre. In fact, I ran in the Illinois State cross country meet where Virgin set the course record at Detweiller Park in Peoria, the record that has remained untouched by Torres, Torres, Sage, Broe, Withrow, Derrick, etc.
I was lucky enough to see Pre race once, at the 1975 Indoor Sunkist Games in Southern California. In typical Prefontaine fashion, he led wire to wire in the 2 mile.
You ask how we rank him as a runner. Of course we rank him very high. He was the best American at the time, and ran very gutsy races. How could you not like that?
I think the real point of your question is that you seem to take exception to his low ranking of athletes that died young. Any list like that is merely the opinion of the author. If you were to make that list, it would obviously be different.
Since you're asking contemporaries of Prefontaine, I think I can explain why he is not higher on that list. You need to put yourself back into the 70s and see things the way we saw them. There was no internet. We rarely saw track meet results. Now you can practically see any college result (DI, II, or III) the night of the meet. We did not have that. We would get a copy of Track & Field News and see results from last month. There was no cable TV, which means you only saw track & field on TV during the Olympics. There were no cell phones, meaning way less communication between people. With cell phones, texting, e-mail, Facebook, etc, etc, everybody knows everybody. A good example of this current constant communication took place during the Olympic Trials Marathon. My knew a one of the runners, and several people who were in NY to watch the race, and he knew of the tragedy with Ryan Shay before it hit the news.
If you want to get a feel for what it was like, let's say all your information about running came from articles in your local newspaper. You might get an occasional local track meet result, and that's it. In non-Olympic years, Sports Illustrated might do only two running articles per year. Track & Field News wasn't current by the time you got it.
With that in mind, you can see why Prefontaine didn't get the ranking that you think he should. He didn't get the publicity. We runners knew about him, but not nearly as much as we do today. Most of the other athletes in the article played the major ball sports, and that is what fills sports pages and Sports Illustrated. Those guys also played on national TV, so their names were more like household names. Non-runners did not know who Prefontaine was. Even in these days of constant communication, ask a non-runner about Galen Rupp, and they will not know who he is.
Yes, Prefontaine was great, but to non-runners, or someone doing a list like the one mentioned, he is just a minor footnote.