Utes vs UCLA

The adjusted scoring offense and defense numbers should directly address strength of schedule issues. For example, to better explain that number if UCLA scored 40 on a team that usually gives up 40 that not really a great game for them even though usually their offense scores 26 so it seems like they outperformed their opponent they really only just barely met the expectation. However if you score 34 on a team that usually gives up 20 thats actually a great offensive output. So that number inherently adjusts to how you good did against what you would expect a team to do given the competition. UCLAs offense frequently underperforms by about 1 point and the utes offense frequently underperforms by about 4 points. Both defenses though tend to outperform expectations by a TD.
UCLA has definitely played a harder schedule thus far though, most SOS sites have them between 5-10 for SOS rank in the nation whereas utah is 50-60 range for sos. UCLA opponents are 28-19 for the year. Utahs opponents (without SUU) are 17-24 for the year which is part of why Utah has an edge in the unadjusted numbers.

The real answer to that is because people from utah don’t bet enough we end up giving the other team a few extra points on the spread in order to entice utah fans to bet more.

The point spread is not really a prediction of the game, it is designed to draw equal betting on both sides so that the sports books make money.

In most statistical comparisons and predictors this game that are not related to gambling the game are setting the line at -2 or -3 for ucla which is really just the home field advantage. If we played this game in utah the computers/stats models would likely say -2 or -3.