It would be interesting to know who that athlete was. I think it may be common for any athlete who is not getting the attention he would like or thinks he deserves to think he is being overlooked. Other than the top 150 guys, I think you would find this to be pretty normal.
Colorado kids get noticed if they deserve notice pretty consistently. There are Colorado football players who have signed with Texas, SC, Oregon, the Arizona schools (a number of players,) Stanford, aTm, Florida, Vandy, Syracuse, Michigan, and the list goes on. To be a top athlete you have to have a certain amount of belief in yourself and to not get recruited by schools you think should be recruiting you goes against that belief. CSU has a number of guys every year who are highly resentful that CU didn't recruit them, they think they are AQ level athletes and the CU staff didn't. UNC (Northern Colorado) has a bunch of guys who think they were good enough to play in the Mountain West and resent CSU for overlooking them, some goes on.
That said, kids in Colorado are going to have to do or be something special to get the same attention they would in some other states. States like Texas, California, Florida Ohio, etc. have literally hundreds of players who are going to be playing college football on some level. The concentration of talent makes it more time and cost effiecient for schools to start their out of state recruiting efforts there. Colorado in a given year is going to have 15-20 kids who are worthy of notice as BCS level prospects. The return on time and money isn't the same for out of state schools. This also means that the level of competition that kids face, especially in some of the less powerful conferences is questionable compared to the kids in the power states. Taking a kid from Colorado can be riskier because you don't know how he will handle top flight competition. Just as an example you would be more easily able to relate to. How many top flight CB prospects are there in Colorado. If I am looking at a WR prospect out of the Dallas or Houston area he may have game tape for 4-6 games against a CB who is likely to be playing D1 football. Camps can give a lot of information but what matters is still does a guy step up when the pads and helmet are on and crowd is watching.
Even with all that if a Colorado kid is worth a look he will usually get noticed. Two years ago the most talked about recruit in the state was probably Austin Hindler who signed with Cal. He played in a lower division and went to a school in a small town hundreds of miles from Denver and still got noticed.