Colorado, Washington State, and Utah are the only cold weather schools in the PAC. They are at a tremendous recruiting disadvantage. Given the choice as a young recruit from a warm weather state, I'd rather go to San Diego State, UNLV, Houston, or even San Jose State instead of Utah.

A kid that specifically prefers warm weather might choose one of the warm weather schools, just for that reason. Otherwise, I'd feel pretty comfortable putting Colorado's overall package side-by-side with anything else in the Pac-12, other than maybe the Northern California schools. Colorado's campus - and the overall Boulder experience, in general - is breathtaking. And the snowy, cold weather is actually a novelty/selling point to some of these kids. And speaking as someone who has experienced years of both places, I can honestly say that the weather there is not all that similar to the weather in SLC. There are lots of relatively warm, sunny days during the winter in Boulder. There is sunshine during the winter in SLC - at least in theory. In reality - especially lately - the SLC inversion renders the Utah sunshine somewhat irrelevant. And it seems like once it gets cold in SLC, it stays cold until well into springtime (the seven-day forecasts during the winter here make me want to curl into the fetal position and cry).

For a few very specific reasons, the CU football program has really fallen on hard times, in the last 8-10 years. That is going to take some time to change (I believe we've reached the nadir, fortunately). Still, I cringe whenever I hear someone speak about Utah and Colorado as if they were in similar situations. I'm admittedly biased; but I see comparing Colorado to Utah similar to comparing BYU to Salt Lake Community College.