There’s no question that Ute fans should be feeling the pain right now. After losing consecutive contests to Arizona and UCLA, Utah’s once bright prospects of a New Year’s Six or even playoff berth went up in smoke. The Utes are now struggling for position in the conference with three or four other middle of the pack teams, with no mathematical way to win the South. So how bad is it, really?
Measuring expectations is tricky. It’s easy to compare final results against preseason predictions, but preseason guesses are based on extremely limited information. Impact freshmen, injuries, and unexpected results in key games can cause wild swings in reasonable predictions.