Ok, we can all agree, i think, that monk is probably a broken character. To make it simple, it is. I have watched a player,mind you she has about 6 months of gaming under her belt, struggle with a monk. She had almost no ability to hit anything put in front of her. The dm restricted the game to just the core rules until recently. Once we had the advanced book, he allowed her to adjust her character to an archtype(zen master) and within a single session, she was able to finally show not just promise, she actually shined as a true combatant in her own right.
I do believe that the Fob is a key factor in the monk setup. It is what you set your entire combat strategy around for a monk, that is what makes it key. i do agree that making a monks BAB 1/1 is a horrible idea. The problem for monks lies in magical gear, basically armor and weapons. Yes its nice that you can use a weapon wth your flurry of blows and at low levels this seems to work out nicely, but once a monk gets up to a unarmed strike above a 1d8 the idea of wielding a weapon almost becomes pointless.
A good change would be a way to magically imbue a monks unarmed weapon and give them a magical deflection(or natural armor), i believe i've seen in some 3.5 books for Samuari characters a way for them to enchant there blades up through ritual, at the expense of gold. This i think could easily fix both of the monks major drawbacks in weapons and armor. By allowing them to train and meditate for 1 day per 1000 gp at a monestary, they can increase their armor or unarmed strike as if it were a magic weapon/armor. A monk must also then first have atleast a +1 before they could enhance themselves with a special ability. Then you can drop the monk ability to always consider a monks unarmed attack to be magical as long as it had a ki point.
This i believe could easily fix a good portion of what is broken with the monk. THe other part is that wisdom is realy the key stat to the monk so it should be added as a class feature that a monks attacks are adjusted by its wisdom(for ranged and melee) but not damage. That is still a strength attribute. A monk is about precisely hitting an opponent, not just overpowering an opponent. This is why a monk gets breaks on attacks that go beyond just bashing an opponents head in.
