when there are comparable programs at both. As a large state school Utah emphasizes both undergrad and grad programs. BYU is on the record as emphasizing on undergrad education and does just that with few exceptions (which they are superior to Utah at...law business, accounting, nursing, etc). When you compare the comparable undergrad areas of emphasis for both, BYU is consistently stronger. All basic sciences. Engineering. Social sciences. Math. Performing Arts. Communications. PolySci.

With few to no exceptions, BYU is superior to Utah. Obviously Utah has better medical and medical research offerings. They have a number of strong graduate depts (many of which BYU doesn't have...though their undergrads often do the comparable level of grad research or work). And Utah has a better football team (for now). But that's about it. It's not just USNews that has that opinion. If you look at USNews' other rankings you referred to, those are "graduate department" comparison....not something you can compare apples to apples to between BYU and Utah because while BYU has a "graduate" presence in most of those fields (because their faculty do research in those areas) it's not really a graduate program. If it was, it stands to reasonably project that they would be as robust as BYU's other grad programs it actually puts time and resources into (which I mentioned above) that excel over Utah's programs.