Want to redo our site and make it right

My current site is NCAA Football 08 Previews, Message Board and Rosters at ncaaStrategies for NCAA Football 08

The site has been around in one name or another for the past 5 years, but we really want to take it to the next level.

We are considering going with vBSEO as our google ranking has gone from #1 overall to the bottom of page 7 in with our most important keywords with all the changes.

We have all the relevant content and a decent number of sites pointing at us - how much help will vBSEO alone offer?

What else do we need to look at?

Additionally we are not happy with the look of vBadvanced. While we could spend some considerable time tweaking it, we want to know if it is our best option before we invest the time.

How is it for SEO? Is there a better option for posting news content on a homepage? Making RSS feeds available and such?

We are not skilled in graphics and don't have the resources to code an option that would probably allow us to do everything we want to do from the ground up. What kind of options do we have?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.