Results that do the talking:
Oregon 31, Fresno St 24 (squeaker)
Nevada over Cal
Montana over UW (Big Sky, aka MWC minor league)
Utah St over WSU
Fresno St over UCLA
SDSU over Utah
SDSU over Arizona
NAU over Arizona (Big Sky, see above)
And, BYU has beaten Arizona, Utah and ASU this year, and physically manhandled each of them.
The PAC12 is NOT good and the top half of the MWC is competitive with the PAC12 middle tier (maybe better). I'd put SDSU up against ASU this year. Other than Oregon, I'm not sure anyone in our conference is really good.
But NOT when you look at recruiting rankings over any measure of time. The best MWC recruiting rankings still would fall in last place in the PAC.
The old debate is that once you are outside the top 25 year after year in rankings (and maybe it's top 15), the differences tend to get small. Small enough that good coaching (and player development) can fix a lot of it. I'm all for CU getting back to a top 15 in recruiting but it would help a lot if we looked like we could handle Montana. We could have top 10 talent right now and not get out of our own way.
Edit: another way to say that is I think Fresno State is better than us. Why can't we do with our talent what they are doing with theirs? That would turn some heads and we'd be back on our way after what, 20 years of hell?