The power rankings of the teams you listed are as follows; New Mexico St 106, CSU 100, UNLV 74, SDSU 89. Conversely, the power rankings of the four lowest B12 teams are CU 80, KU 78, BU 71, and ISU 69. Therefore, playing in the B12N is almost as great an advantage as playing in the MWC (I only half believe my argument here, but I do feel winning the MWC is a much greater accomplishment than winning the B12 north).
The MWC is lacking a little depth, I can't disagree with that point. I wonder if there really are serious discussions with other schools right now as rumored.
The problem for the MWC is and for the foreseeable future is that same as they have faced all along, money. If you consider that even San Diego ignores SDSU and the MWC their entire footprint of primary market coverage is less than that of USC/UCLA. Outside of BYU which seats and consistently sells 65k tickets the highest average attendance in the MWC is in the low 40k's and some schools like Wyoming, CSU, UNLV are more often in the low 20k's even with substantially lower ticket prices than even the bad schools in the higher profile conferences. An AQ is not going to fix this problem.
The MWC consistently brings in poor TV ratings, even in their footprint (except for in Utah) and their ratings are abismal outside of their footprint, nobody cares, nobody watches. Their bowl game ratings, despite putting on very fun games, are consistenly among the lowest of all the bowls. Even last years Sugar Bowl was the lowest rated BCS game not only of the year but in at least five years.
This is the reason that ESPN offered them such a poor contract that they had to leave it for their current CBSCS, Vs., Mtn package that generates much less money for the conference than some SEC teams will get under their new contract.
On the field this translates as well. Win big in the MWC as a coach and is your reward a long-term big money deal? Maybe, but it will be with a team outside the conference like Urban Meyer got and Patterson will soon get. As to players the MWC has some great ones but rarely were they expected to be. The top players in HS who have their choice of were to go rarely pick the MWC. They go to conferences that are on ABC/ESPN and are shown on SportsCenter. Even TCU admits that they play with the scraps left by Texas, OU, aTm, OSU, and all the top conference teams that recruit Texas. Mizzou normally gets more highly rated players out of Texas than TCU does even though TCU takes bigger numbers.
This is not to put down the MWC, but quite frankly put their top schools in the Big XII North and they would compete but I would not give them any titles. Again play bigger stronger teams every week and your game changes. Iowa State is bigger and stronger than most if not all MWC teams, maybe not as skilled as TCU, BYU, Utah but bigger and stronger as are the rest of the Big XII teams.
I know it is fun to cheer for David because sometimes he wins and it makes a great story but in football the smart money over the long term is on Goliath.