Do Preseason Rankings Have Any Merit?

I've been putting off doing my preseason rankings this year, mostly out of laziness. It requires a lot of work to gather all the information about 120 teams' returning coaches, coordinators, starters, and special teams. So in lieu of actually doing all the fact-finding, I decided to look over the data I already had and see what it's telling me about whether or not my preseason ranking actually have any bearing on who comes out on top at the end of the year. As I've stated before, most preseason rankings are just throwing darts at a team list and then applying some subjective filtering based on historical performance (effectively voting for laundry) or "gut feelings" about which team is poised to have a huge year. Case in point: Sports Illustrated lists Utah at 19 for 2009-10, despite having finished with an undefeated record last year and returning half their starters and their coach. Meanwhile, the Alabama team that Utah throttled in the Sugar Bowl comes in at #8 with virtually identical circumstances.
Anyway, if my preseason rankings aren't indicative of future performance, then they're kind of worthless, even if based on based solely on measurable data rather than intuition. What follows is a table showing the preseason and final rankings for each team that appeared in the top 25 spots on Chaos Rankings top 25 in either of the past two seasons.

Team	07-08 Pre	07-08 Final	08-09 Pre	08-09 Final
Alabama	61	49	46	9
Arizona State	59	16	16	76
Auburn	15	29	28	81
Ball State	85	51	47	11
Boise State	1	14	11	6
Boston College	28	13	13	33
BYU	8	10	8	16
California	20	58	56	20
Cinncinati	52	12	9	18
Clemson	26	18	14	54
Florida	7	17	14	1
Georgia	36	9	5	15
Hawaii	11	5	17	72
Houston	19	43	53	38
Iowa	72	65	66	19
Kansas	63	1	1	44
Louisville	12	60	58	86
LSU	10	2	2	46
Michigan	9	31	49	106
Mississippi	102	101	86	24
Missouri	30	4	3	21
Notre Dame	25	102	109	56
Ohio State	3	7	4	13
Oklahoma	13	8	7	4
Oklahoma State	43	53	51	23
Oregon	50	19	19	14
Oregon State	21	30	32	25
Penn State	23	22	22	8
Rice	67	107	113	17
Rutgers	14	39	36	37
South Florida	29	20	18	43
TCU	5	44	43	7
Tennessee	24	24	23	74
Texas	17	15	20	5
Texas A&M	22	55	60	93
Texas Tech	41	21	21	10
Tulsa	51	26	25	12
UCF	103	25	27	100
USC	6	6	6	2
Utah	33	23	24	3
Virginia Tech	16	11	12	22
Wake Forest	18	33	30	36
West Virginia	4	3	10	27
Wisconsin	2	34	29	55

Of this group of 44 teams (more than 1/3 of Div. I-A for those keeping score at home), there were only 14 moves of 5 or fewer spots (from 88 slots). And then 30 moves of 10 spots or less, and 39 moves of 25 spots or more (enough to drop any team out of the top tier). That's a lot of movement in what's supposed to be the upper crust. If you look at the entire Div. I-A data set, for both seasons, about 50% of teams moved at at least 20 spots up or down from their preseason rankings. In fact, almost 1/3 of teams moved 30 or more spots.
If you're curious, the most consistent teams are, in order: Army, USC, New Mexico State, Oklahoma, BYU, Ohio State, Oregon State, Virginia Tech, Arkansas State, and Boise State. Those are your teams that perform to expectations, whether good (USC, Oklahoma, etc) or bad (Army, Arkansas State, etc). The biggest movers and shakers are, in order: Rice, UCF, Michigan, Notre Dame, Illinois, Ole Miss, UConn, Minnesota, Mississippi State, and Western Kentucky. Next on the list would be Kansas. Those are your teams that had a very down year or a very up year and skewed either their preseason ranking or their final ranking considerably.
In 2007-08, only 3 of the final top 10 came from outside the preseason top 15, which so isn't bad. Conversely, 3 preseason top 10 teams aren't represented in the final top 25, which is a pretty lousy prediction. In 2008-09, things get worse. 6 of the final top 10 came from outside the preseason top 15, 5 from outside the top 20, and 2 from outside the top 25, while again 3 preseason top 10 teams weren't in the final 25. I'll grant the occasional team experiencing a total collapse (Wisconsin, Notre Dame, Michigan) or coming from nowhere (Kansas, Mizzou) or even mid-major yo-yoing (TCU, Utah), but more the most part, teams expected to finish in the top 10 shouldn't be finishing outside of the Top 25. And I would expect to see nearly all of the final top 10 coming from at least the preseason top 25.
So, what does this all mean? It means despite my best ranking-design efforts, there's a lot of movement going on from the preseason to the final rankings, which leads me to believe that the preseason rankings aren't doing a very good job of predicting anything. So I'm going to forgo this year's preseason rankings, at least for now. In the mean time, I'd like to go back and try to correlate some data and see if I can pick out any patterns that indicate future performance based on available preseason data.