In either of the above scenarios they'd quite likely be the favorite in their pod (either Iowa St, Kansas St, Kansas or Iowa St, Cincy, WVU - assuming Cincy has to adapt) and would go into the final game of the season with a play-in game to the conference championship and against a top team.

Yeah, they'd only get an average of 2.9 games against Texas teams per year, but that's not much different than the 3 games they'd get in a more traditional divisions setup