A look at the history of football on TV shows some of the most compelling games have featured three opponents — the home team, the visiting team, and the weather.

Alex’s Weather Notes explores further (as passed on by my favorite online meteorologist, Mike Smith):

There are also plenty of examples from college football. The picture at the beginning of this article was taken during the 1950 installment of the Ohio State vs. Michigan rivalry game with a Big Ten championship on the line. It was a late November game, played during a snowstorm, that featured very little scoring and 45 punts. Columbus, Ohio recorded 7.5 inches of snow for the day, with a high temperature of only 20 degrees – still the coldest maximum temperature for that date.

Of course I could go ahead and list or rank many of the “worst weather football games”. I’ve already briefly discussed two that stand out in the professional and college ranks. That concept had interested me originally, but many have already done that and the process would be quite subjective. I prefer numbers, and so I’ve decided to approach weather and football from a statistical and climatological perspective. With the new college football season beginning around the time I started this project, I decided to develop a climatology for locations where teams from the Football Bowl Subdivision play.

Recognize any logo in this graphic of September-to-November weather?

Situated nearly a mile and a half (7165 feet) above sea level amongst mountain ranges is Laramie, Wyoming, home of the University of Wyoming. It was settled in the mid-19th century along the Union Pacific railroad, and the university followed shortly thereafter in 1886. War Memorial Stadium, home of the Wyoming Cowboys, has the distinction of being the highest elevation stadium in the Football Bowl Subdivision. With that in mind, it’s not too surprising that the Cowboys ended up with the coldest stadium location by average temperature by a considerable margin. …

As you can see from the rankings above, no matter which measure you choose Laramie comes out on top as college football’s coldest spot. Average temperature is merely a simple average of the high and low temperatures on a given day. I also ranked the various stadium locations by average maximum temperature, as many of the games are played at some point during the afternoon hours, which is when the warmest conditions usually are. I didn’t consider minimum temperatures because they often occur very late at night, or close to sunrise, when football games are not played. Therefore, it could be argued that the average maximum temperature would be the most representative measure of coldest college football locations. Either way, it makes no difference to which stadium ends up in first place, and very little difference to the top five – the same stadiums are in slightly different order.

So the five coldest college football locations can likely be considered to be a combination of Wyoming, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Washington State, and Central Michigan. Minnesota makes the list having just recently switched from a domed to outdoor stadium in 2009. The change makes the Minnesota-Wisconsin rivalry game one of the coldest on average in the FBS. The Gophers and Badgers have been battling it out for the Paul Bunyan Axe since 1948, and have been contesting the rivalry game since 1890. 11 of the last 18 games (1995-2012) have been played in November, but only 1 of the last 4.

Long-time Badger fans know that Wisconsin and Minnesota used to be the last game of every season, until Minnesota decided that instead of ending the season battling for the Paul Bunyan Axe, they wanted to end the season battling Minnesota for Floyd of Rosedale. (For those unaware: Floyd is a pig.)

As for Wyoming: Wisconsin played two games against the Cowboys in the ’80s — in Laramie in 1985, and in Madison in 1986. Both games were in September, since they were nonconference games. Badger fans who went to Laramie woke up to snow the day of the game.

Alex goes on to say that snow is relatively rare in college football because the regular season is usually done by Thanksgiving weekend. (Regular-season games played after that usually are in warm climates, such as Hawaii.) Rare, however, is not never:

This is the end of halftime from the 1985 Michigan State–Wisconsin game, the final game of that season. (And the last game Dave McClain coached the Badgers; he died two days after the Cardinal and White spring game, five months and about 50 degrees later.) I’m in the diagonal of the N. It is one of the legendary moments in UW Band history; it wasn’t snowing during morning practice, but when pregame began, the artificial turf was instead a sea of white.

What about other weather?

The same year of the aforementioned snow game, it seemed that it rained at every game. My first year in the UW Band, if it rained during a home game, the Badgers won, and if it didn’t rain, the Badgers lost.

This graphic is pertinent since Wisconsin is at Arizona State Saturday night. Of course, with the old artificial turf (which seemed to be more like green-painted asphalt), if it was 80 degrees in the stands, it was 100 down on the field. Wearing wool band uniforms made things hotter.

The Badgers’ indoor practice facility is named the McClain Center. There’s some irony in that, because as far as bad weather for practices was concerned, McClain was fond of quoting his coaching mentor, Woody Hayes: “As Admiral Nimitz said, if you’re going to fight in the North Atlantic, you have to train in the North Atlantic.” (Given UW’s record during McClain’s career — which was better than his predecessor, John Jardine, or his successor, Don Mor(t)on, but not up to today’s standards — perhaps he should have used another Hayes quote: “If we worked half as hard as our band, we’d be champions.”