Colorado is at the leading edge of the lucrative global ________ industry.
A) Ski
B) HiTech
C) Oil
D) BioTech
E) Financial Services
F) Software
G) Sporting Goods and Athletic Apparell
H) Brewing, Beverage, and Spirits
I) Financial Services
J) Aerospace
K) Aggraculture
L) Tourism & Hospitality
M) Education
N) Healthcare
O) Aviation
P) Government
Q) Movies & Entertainment
R) Herbal Tea, mercinary magazine, and ugly but comfortable plastic shoes for kids and people with no taste.
The reason I ask this question is that my hypothesis is that there is a natural relationship between jumbo industries and jumbo donars to the CU athletic department. Colorado and the Denver market is primarily a regional distribution location that doesn't lead the nation in any leading industry. The leading company in the area in revenue is Qwest, which pales in comparison to AT&T and Verizon. How many Qwest excecutives are passionate about the Buffs enough to fund the best sports facilities in the B12? There are not any fortune 50 companies that are HQ'd in the Denver/Boulder MSA. And there are very few Fortune 500s.
For CU to land a whale, it needs to be part of a state that puts the development of wealth as a higher priority.
CU does not leverage the state's humongous tourism or agricultural industries. The investment in the Denver/Fitzsimons Medical Center is a good move, but the distance from Boulder means a lower corelation with alums who are willing to pump cash into CU-Boulder's athletic arms race.
When your alumni take a percentage of their saleries in scenery, you are not creating a donar class of alumni.
And if your alumni come from OOS on a ratio of 1:1 with instate, you can expect your graduates to leave the state if there isn't some thriving industry there to snap up CU's best and brightest. At the end of the day, you want alumni who show up for the game on Saturday and also throw a few grand in donations towards the C-club. If I had only a thousand to put towards traveling to see the game, or donating to the school, I'd spend that money on rental cars, plane tickets, hotel rooms, and the price of admission. Thus Hertz rental, Marriot Hotels, and American airlines is syphoning off 90 percent of my CU fan support, just by the fact that I'm unable to land a high paying job within driving distance of CU Boulder. Multiply this math times 2,500 alumni graduating every year, and this helps paint the picture of why CU is not leading the B12 football arms race.