I don't believe for a minute Utah is playing top 10 to 15 football. They are taking advantage of being in the PAC, nothing more. Utah got handled by Penn St. in a game that was nowhere near as close as the final score. Utah lost to a mediocre Florida team.
I'm not sure Utah is playing top 20 football right now. Playing in the PAC is definitely skewing the numbers in Utah's favor.
Until you can accept that the PAC is not what you keep trying to push it as, you will always have a skewed view of where Utah actually is in CFB.
MS. St. won 9 games in the SEC. The only way Utah wins 9 games in the SEC is if they played an 18-20 game season.
The stakes and implications are only part of the equation, not the entire equation.