Group Images or Rank Override

This is related to my post in the templates forums regarding ranks for admins and moderators.

I want to be give the appearance that admins and moderators are assigned a higher rank in the forums, one that is not based on the number of posts. I can do this one of two ways if the following features are implemented.

1) I need to be able to override the rank assigned to each user. So for each user I can set a specific rank or select "Based on number of posts".
2) It also seems the description for each rank is no longer displayed on the front end. Is it possible to have that reenabled?

OR

To do this I need a couple of things for each group:
1) I need to be able to hide the number of posts and associated rank for all users that belong to a certain group.
2) I need to be able to hide the user role (Administrator, Moderator, Registered, etc) for all users that belong to a certain group.
3) I need to be able to assign an image, similar to those used in ranks, to each group.
3) I need to be able to display the group a user belongs to in their information, including the name of the group, the image associated with the group, and the group description.