"It seems logical that teams from cold-weather conferences would want to open against other cold-weather teams."
 
Really?
 
Since they forced the late start down the NCAA's throat, have the cold-weather teams gotten better? Care to calculate the combined scores of the Big 10 champion's post-season games over the past 4 years?
The Northern schools aren't competitive.  One of the reasons they aren't competitive is that they refuse to play the better southern and western programs.  Despite all the excuses you happily write for them, they just aren't willing to take the necessary lumps to become competitive.  And you justify that?!?
Your publication's credibility is laid bare by comments like that.  You aren't a reliable source of independent journalism, you're a bunch of apologists for whatever coaches you happen to be writing about.  The term, I believe, is "hacks".

Fred, UConn won a regional last year and clearly was competitive at South Carolina in the super regional; Illinois and Minnesota have been finalists at the last two regionals at Fullerton; Michigan won a regional at Vanderbilt, the SEC champion, in 2007. And there’s the little matter of Oregon State winning back-to-back national titles in 2006-2007. Northern schools are hard to lump together, but my feel is that in general, over my 15 years covering college baseball, more Northern programs are national competitive now than was the case when I started.

As far as scheduling goes, when a Sun Belt-area program wants to play at a Northern school in February or March, let me know. The fact that you can’t see how big a factor weather is in college baseball, and that pointing that out makes us a “bunch of apologists,” is kind of funny.