Personally, I think it’s fun to be the clear outsider in the league. The PAC 12 rivalries kind of sucked, although part of that was being mostly bad, but part of it is just not managing to muster a lot of ire against teams like Utah or Cal.
Regarding the “road trips”, do most of you actually go on a lot of road trips to watch CU play? I always felt that was oversold in the PAC 12. Sure, a smattering of fans would fly out for a game in Seattle, and CU does have more alumni in places like that, but it just seems oversold to me. In fact, I think you can fill the road trip cravings with good OOC games. The CU Michigan game in Ann Arbor was great six years ago. Go to the Big 12, and do better road games on the OOC slate.