I hate to sound like a kill-joy, but I find this whole discussion to be slightly pointless. There will never be a way any of us can agree on the order or rank of teams. Even if we develop ranking systems, there are discrapencies in the results. Furthermore, there are circumstances relating to awards and regionals that cannot be explained.
After 7 pages of posts, it seems clear that the "best teams" are usually chosen off of whims, biases, or general perceptions. What is worse, we seem to be comparing teams of different ages! A team that has won a lot in the past, but has been falling in glory over the past 5 years is often put above a team that has explosive and tremendous success in their short existence.
I wish I could see more discussion of current successes, rather than older reputations. As horrible as it might sound, we should be asking, "What have you done lately?"
