a respected football team.
If you ask me Utah was not the 10th best team in the country, not even when healthy... but the very fact that they were ranked that high suggests that someone who matters thought they deserved to be ranked that high for some reason. It's silly to assume it was a fluke when it's happened two years in a row.
You can invent conspiracy theories about it if you want, but maybe the answer is much more simple than you are willing to believe.