[yocto] Creating new u-boot board

[Matt Schuckmann]

I'm pretty confused about what is the best way to go on this. 
I realize that there are several paths that I could take but I really don't know which is the best way to go. 

We are creating a new board largely based off the beaglebone design but customized to our needs.
I'm basing my software work off the TI SDK 7.0 (yes I know that is almost a year but it is the TI blessed version)

I feel like I need to create a new u-boot board configuration which I have done in my own sandbox. 

Now I don't know if I should be creating a patch for my changes and adding them to a bbappends for the ti u-boot recipe or if I should create a new clone of ti's u-boot repo to check my changes into and create a new recipe that references my repo? Or is there another option that I should be exploring. 

Which path is preferred?
What are the short/long term pro's and con's of each approach? 

Matt S.