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The best /out/ colleges are in small towns.
Example 1: I went to NAU in Flagstaff, AZ for my undergrad, and because the town is so small, I could literally just take a <10 minute car ride to some decent mountain biking, hiking, or running trails. I don't mean like paved urban running trails or crowded hiking trails. These were decent trails with no crowds. Trout fishing was <25 minutes away, and actual mountain climbing was likewise 20-40 minutes away, depending on which trailhead. A one-hour drive could put me in the middle of nowhere, and I could get to a huge variety of mountain and desert destinations within 2 hours - usually less.
Example 2: My brother went to MIZZOU in Columbia, MO, and while there are no real mountains in Missouri, the house that he and some buddies rented backed up to the woods. Foxes would visit at night to eat scraps, and he made his Christmas tree by cutting down a baby redcedar. He found a canoe in the same woods, and would carry it about 100 yards downhill to a creek and float out to the Missouri River after a big enough rain.
Example 3: I'm doing my post-grad at the University of Utah, in Salt Lake City, which is a large city. While there are a lot of "outdoor destinations" in Utah, I find myself driving a lot farther than I did when I lived in Flagstaff to get to the good ones. There are mountains ~30-40 minutes outside of downtown, but they get very crowded in the summer, both weekends and weekdays. Trailhead parking lots around these nearby mountains will frequently overflow on a Saturday or Sunday. SLC is a much bigger city than Flagstaff, and Utah is a lot more spread out than Arizona. For instance, you might say that we have Moab and Zion, but Moab is 4 hours away, and Zion is 5 hours away. I might as well live in Kansas. Getting to the Uintas is pretty direct (1.5 hours), and there's some decent hiking around the Wasatch Front (albeit crowded), but aside from that the closest mountain climbing in Wyoming is a 4 hour drive.
