There are differences of opinion in the literature on where on the page the breadcrumbs line should be placed. Steve Krug's book 'Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability' puts it this way:
Put them at the top. Breadcrumbs seem to work best if they're at the top of the page, above everything. I think this is probably because it literally marginalizes them - making them seem like an accessory, like page numbers in a book or magazine. When breadcrumbs are farther down on the page they end up contending with the primary navigation. Result? It makes me think. ("Which one is the real navigation? Which one should I be using?")
Breadcrumbs are, even according to the study cited here (the Software Usability Research Laboratory at Wichita State University is one of the best resources on web usability; it's linked in the Web DevNet site under 'Web Talk > Offsite Resources') at best a tertiary navigational aid.
I'm not so sure that the higher use of breadcrumbs when they are placed under the title and explicitly "closer to other links on the page" might not stem from user confusion, as Krug alludes to.
For what it's worth, Jakob Neilsen (useit.com, author of the book 'Designing Web Usability,' and the preeminent expert on web usability) places breadcrumbs at the top on his own site.
And the second question: Has any consideration been made toward moving the breadcrumbs?
None so far. The difficulty of moving an interface element at this point is that we have several thousand pages using tables for layout in which the location of that element can't be controlled from an external file. We'll need to complete a transition to coding using pure CSS positioning (at least for the template elements); some developers may require substantial assistance. Then we would have the flexibility to change that element's location without having everyone digging into their code on each individual page under their control.