sweepstakes. They genuinely believed it. Not only did Utah get accepted right away...but Utah admin knew all along they had an open invite. BYU and B12 twitteradi were way off.
It was the same with competitiveness. The belief was that the Pac-12 was so bad, Utah would've been mid level in any other P5 as evidenced by Utah's poor OOC P5 performance.
So while you are smart and objective enough to know Utah will be competitive, this group doesn't think that at all.
Maybe I'm biased but I have a hard time believing Utah with Rising healthy next year will struggle. I think Utah will be one of the top contenders. They'll lose at least 2-3 games but so will the other contenders.