Arkansas football fans will be shocked to find out that the team’s 2023 schedule is ranked as the nation’s sixth toughest, according to ESPN’s Football Power Index.

FPI is a predictive rating system designed to measure team strength and project performance going forward, according to ESPN.

“The ultimate goal of FPI is not to rank teams 1 through (131); rather, it is to correctly predict games and season outcomes,” ESPN’s website states. “If Vegas ever published the power rankings it uses to set its lines, they would likely look quite a lot like FPI.”

ESPN released its newest FPI rankings back on April 17 and the Razorbacks checked in at No. 30 overall following a 7-6 campaign with a Liberty Bowl win over Kansas in 2022. That made the Hogs the ninth best SEC squad, just two spots below Kentucky and two spots ahead of Mississippi State.

Strength of schedule is also a metric that is taken into account with the FPI, and it has Arkansas with the sixth toughest schedule in the country and fourth toughest in the SEC. Ole Miss’ schedule was ranked as the hardest, Florida checked in at No. 2 and Auburn was one spot ahead of the Razorbacks at No. 5.

Things start of easy with a pair of non-conference matchups against Western Carolina and Kent State, but the competition ramps up quickly after that. BYU will come to Fayetteville for a Week 3 matchup on Sept. 16 and then Arkansas will hit the road for four consecutive games.

The first SEC matchup will be Week 4 at LSU inside of the always dangerous Tiger Stadium. That game is followed by a meeting with Texas A&M at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. Back-to-back road games at Ole Miss and at Alabama will round out the four-game stretch away from home.

An Oct. 21 game against Mississippi State will be the first conference game for Razorback fans to watch at Donald W. Reynolds Razorback Stadium in Fayetteville. The matchup with the Bulldogs will be followed up with a bye week and then another road trip to Gainesville, Florida, to face the Florida Gators at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, which seats just under 90,000 people.

Arkansas will finish the schedule with three straight home games against Auburn, Florida International and Missouri, which the Hogs will play on Saturday, Nov. 25 this year.

As you can see, it is no cake walk. On top of the grueling schedule, head coach Sam Pittman added two new coordinators, five total new on-field assistants and there are 39 total new scholarship players as of now.

Normally there is the ability to get adjusted early, but after Week 2 things get tough. The trip to LSU on Sept. 23 is the earliest the Razorbacks have ever played the Tigers and the first time since 1936 that the teams have met before the month of November.

The road games at LSU, Ole Miss, Alabama and Florida are as challenging as it gets in today’s college football landscape.

Following the 2021 season, Arkansas finished with the nation’s second hardest schedule and it had the third toughest a year prior in 2020. The Razorbacks checked in at 34th following last year, the lowest they had been since 2018.

Arkansas will begin its season on Saturday, Sept. 2, against Western Carolina at War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock.