Lot of good stuff here. Since the last posts are more recent, anyone commenting on the name and number of teams in the Big 10 and Big 12 clearly knows little about college football. College football is about tradition, so that speaks for itself as to why they obviously have not changed their name. As for why the Pac 10 decided to change it, dont know, but probably because they have a tradition too...of losing!
Anyhow, about the preseason rankings, let me say this. Most all of you are understating its importance, and LRR might be overstating it a bit. To say preseason rankings mean nothing is pretty ridiculous. Take a simple analysis that is irrefutable. Team A is ranked 1st to start the season....they lose. They move behind the other reputable zero-loss teams until every other team has lost. Who is in first once every team has lost? The team that started the season ranked higher.
You can say, to a point that by the end of the season this is rectified, but it really is not. Very rarely do 2 undefeated teams play in the BCS title game, an very rarely are there only 2 teams in the country with 0 or 1 loss. So invariably you will have teams who share the same amount of losses. When this happens, the team who started the season higher is ranked higher almost every time. Even when a team stays undefeated longer than every other team, once they lose, they drop behind the other teams (see OkSt).
Preseason polls affect future rankings for the first six weeks, maybe eight. After this, the sample size is big enough to rank teams on merit instead of preconceived strength of the team. Oklahoma St. finished 3rd because they lost to Iowa State, plain and simple. If they lose to OU, Texas, or Kansas St., they're playing in the national championship game. I don't think many voters wanted to see a rematch, but championship-caliber teams don't lose to the Iowa States of the FBS.
End of season rankings are based on records, quality wins or lack thereof, recent games, and quality of conference/strength of schedule. I'm sure the order in which voters choose to rank these characteristics vary from voter to voter. I'm also sure that very few, if any, voters care about the preseason rank of a team when voting at the end of the season.
The above applies to the rest of your post as well. We can argue 'til we're blue in the face about the merits of teams ranked 7-20, but at the end of the day each of them has their strengths and weaknesses. I'm sure individual voting would show a large difference in rankings of teams in this range.
At the end of the day, I think we can all agree that a plus-one or playoff format is needed so we don't have to sit through another national championship game like the one we'll have this year. It's a lose-lose for everyone involved, except Alabama of course.