"BYU's games are cosmetic after they've lost one and are out of the New Years Day Bowl discussion because 11-1 and 6-6 are the same"

BYU has 3 stated goals for the program under Bronco that are a minimum criteria for success:
1). Win 10+ games
2). Finish ranked in the top 25
3). Win the bowl game

No game is cosmetic and I'd argue that late season games become more important if there were early season losses. Also, late season losses drop you in the rankings with limited opportunity to recover, thereby making it more important to win late.

"This is why the MWC is preferable. Even if the competition is lower, a Nov game against Air Force or Wyoming means more than a Nov game against Cincinnati even if Cincinnati is actually a better opponent, because it is the difference between first and second or third in the conference and going to the Cotton Bowl, Vegas Bowl or New Mexico bowl."

Again you totally miss the boat. You have to look at the trade off. We'd give up games on the ESPN network for games on the hard to find CBS Sports Network and maybe that's because most of your games are televised on the lower tier conference network and before that you had the Mtn Network. Since you get very few games on a premier national network like ESPN you don't have a keen perspective on national exposure vs no exposure. A Nov game vs Cincinnati brings a potential marquee QB duel between Gunnar Kiel and Taysom Hill. Providing he stays healthy Taysom will be in the Heisman discussion once again, the same could be true for Kiel. It will be a marquee game provided both QB's are healthy and their teams are doing well. Playing Wyoming wouldn't draw any interest. Also if we're having a great season and trying to move up in the polls playing Wyoming, AFA, NM, etc in November won't help us move up the polls and typically allows other teams, who are playing and beating tougher opponents, to leapfrog us in the polls.

The only benefit playing in a g5 conference would bring is a slightly better opportunity to get into a NY6 bowl but we'd have to give up a lot including BYUtv owning our 3rd tier rights, the ability to schedule a competitive lineup of games and a boatload of revenue we get from ESPN just so we can go back to a poisoned conference. We'd be giving up too much for way too little.