After the first few weeks blowing the doors off of people, the national attention absolutely followed. That's why I said not regularly nationally relevant. By exception, both BYU and Utah have had seasons that are nationally relevant - Utah in 2004, 2008, maybe 2015, 2019, BYU in 1996, 2001, 2009, 2020.
But neither of those teams has put together multiple nationally relevant seasons in a row since the mid 80s (and Utah has never reach that height), which puts a bit of a cap on the national attention either gets and especially on the attention the game overall gets. Right now, both programs are seen as cute feel-good stories when they're in contention rather than legitimate regular contenders