The big exceptions being last year (with Utah much worse than predicted) and 2004 and 2008 (with Utah much better than predicted). Other than that, they tend to finish within 5 spots of where they started.

Part of that is self-fulfilling prophecy (easier to end ranked when you start ranked), but most of it is that preseason predictions are generally made by decently smart folks.

The issue is that BYU and Utah fans both go and find the outlier voices (either "Hey, look how great we are, Soandso has us ranked #4!" Or "I can't believe how the media overrated Utah, did you see Soandso has them at #4?!?") and then they don't match those predictions. But if we look at the actual preseason rank from a large number of voices, it generally ends up pretty accurate (with the notable exception of last year)