Living in SLC, I get to fly SkyWest CRJ's fairly often. While I haven't measured, I am pretty sure that there is no difference in legroom between the exit rows and any other row on those CRJ's. That's the bad news.

The good news is (again I haven't measured) that there seems to be more legroom on the CRJ's than in DL's 737 coach seats. (Of course there has to be more room - science has not been able to measure a distance smaller than the amount of legroom in Delta coach!) I just know that when I have to sit in coach on a DL 737 my knees touch the seat in front of me no matter what I do. On the SkyWest CRJ there is an inch or two of clearance. (I am 5'10", so this may not help anyone over 6'.)

When looking for seats online for a CRJ (at least for SkyWest) you may notice that the first two or four rows are not available - even for PM's. According to SMS, those are held for gate assignment, and there is no way you can select/be assgined to those seats until you arrive at the airport. So while it may look like they are blocking out "the seats up front", they are acutally just saving them for gate assignment. Now why they don't save the rows in the back for gate assignment and let medallion members select the seats in front is beyond me.