And here's the list of relevant PAC/Big12/G5 teams in 2021 R&D spending (in $k)

1. Washington 1489
2. UCLA 1455
3. Stanford 1274
4. USC 956
5. Cal 847
   PAC 785
6. Texas 779
7. Arizona 770
   PAC (w/o USC, UCLA) 700
8. Arizona St 677
9. Utah 625
   Future PAC? (-USC/UCLA, +SDSU/SMU) 596
10. Cincinnati 552
11. Colorado 548
12. South Florida 405
13. Kansas 386
14. Oklahoma 380
15. Iowa St 360
16. Washington St 358
17. New Mexico 333
18. Utah St 325
19. Oregon St 277
    Previous XII (pre-BYU etc additions) 277
20. Hawaii 272
    Current XII (w/ BYU etc, still with OU, UT) 271  
21. Central Florida 219
    Future XII (w/ 4 new, losing OUT) 219
22. Kansas St 204
23. Houston 203
24. West Virginia 200
25. Oklahoma St 199
26. Texas Tech 198
27. UTSA 145
28. Oregon 139
29. SDSU 108
30. UNLV 101
31. Memphis 67
32. Baylor 49
33. Boise 46
34. BYU 44
35. SMU 42
36. TCU 15
37. Fresno St 9

Is Utah elite in that regard?  Absolutely not.  Are they substantially higher than any team that could replace them? Yes

Not saying that this SHOULD be important... but it is to certain administrators

Two big takeaways here

• Oregon is pretty weak on the academic/research side - this is reportedly one reason (though not the only) that the B1G prefers Washington over them
  
  
• This is one of the major difficulties with SMU; they're even lower than BYU when it comes to research.  SDSU is low, but still a lot higher than SMU.
  
  It won't get traction, but I'm also willing to bet there will be some academics within the PAC that will balk at the idea of SMU and will legitimately suggest adding schools (not teams, because that isn't how they view it) like Hawaii or New Mexico or Utah St instead of someone like SMU - because that's the world they exist in