If you take the average Sagarin score from 2014 on, then it comes across as
- Oklahoma St 82.24
- TCU 82.16
- Washington 81.84
- Oregon 81.58
- Utah 81.47
- Kansas St 79.00
- Baylor 78.91
- West Virginia 77.31
- Stanford 77.02
- Iowa St 76.23
- Arizona St 75.18
XII AVERAGE 74.80
PAC AVERAGE 74.42
- Washington St 74.25
- BYU 74.00
- Texas Tech 72.94
- Cincinnati 72.79
- UCF 72.71
- Cal 72.12
- Houston 71.62
- Arizona 67.01
- Colorado 66.92
- Oregon St 66.79
- Kansas 57.75
That's far from a knock on Utah. To say they've been the 5th best team in the remaining 22 PAC/XII teams is a compliment. And I think it's absolutely fair to say Utah would immediately be one of the better teams (in either conference). But I don't think you can say Utah would immediately be the top dog in the Big 12.
Just as an aside, here's the rankings if we weight recent history more heavily and only look from 2014 on (instead of 2013)
- Oklahoma St 82.64 (+0.40)
- Utah 82.12 (+0.65)
- Oregon 81.12 (-0.47)
- Washington 80.91 (-0.93)
- TCU 79.99 (-2.16)
- Iowa St 79.36 (+3.13)
- Kansas St 78.99 (-0.01)
- Baylor 78.14 (-0.76)
- West Virginia 76.32 (-0.98)
- Cincinnati 76.04 (+3.25)
XII AVERAGE 75.52
- UCF 75.02 (+2.31)
- Arizona St 74.86 (-0.32)
- BYU 74.80 (+0.80)
- Washington 74.16 (-0.66)
- Texas Tech 74.08 (+1.14)
PAC AVERAGE 73.76
- Stanford 72.65 (-4.37)
- Cal 71.243 (-0.88)
- Houston 71.242 (-0.38)
- Oregon St 69.87 (+3.08)
- Colorado 65.79 (-1.13)
- Arizona 64.89 (-2.11)
- Kansas 59.63 (+1.88)
Again, this isn't meant to tear down Utah. I am often criticized here for pointing out Utah's success... but I just can't see any way that Utah ranks ahead of Oklahoma St (whether over the last decade or over the CFP era).
Utah has been very good and deserves credit... but if you're going to claim Utah is better than anyone else in the conference, that's a high bar and I'll push back on it.