Excluding Covid, Utah has won at least 8 games 7/10 years in the Pac. It’s really not that high a bar to clear. And it’s not like Utah has an extra hard schedule this year. Florida is a big name, but they haven’t really been playing up to expectations lately. USC and Oregon are the only teams being ranked in the preseason poll, and it looks like bettors don’t expect either of them to be much better than Utah. 8.5 really is not that high, I’d say that’s about an average year for Utah lately. So good job, they respect you enough to be about average