In general I agree that polls are silly and biased and the voters are often lazy, and preseason/early season polls are the worst.
But if we're going to say that the team that just beat Michigan has proven more and is better than Texas, then what is Ohio State's claim to #1? If Texas isn't all that, then Ohio State isn't, either.
I understand you're not singling out Texas here and that's not the way I'm taking it, I'm just responding to the general gist of your post with the specific example of Texas.
At some point we have to make assumptions about the quality of a team and during the preseason/early season, the majority of that necessarily comes from the performance the prior season, and the expectation of the current talent and coaching.
Texas was demonstrably superior to OU last year. Texas was expected to be superior to OU this year. So far, a close road loss to the defending national champs and current #1 team, is the only reason to say that OU should be ranked ahead of Texas. But we saw these teams play last year, and it wasn't close.