I would like to see this go away or at least have the option not to use it and use a custom rank of your members choosing....if its there already forgive me and please point it out

That is already handled in the user groups, it's just the user group icon, and can be wiped clean by deleting the link to it in the edit membergroup page. As for a custom member group of one's own choosing, I don't think that exists as of yet, but I'm pretty sure it could be added as a hook or something similar.

That would be a great feature