Our fellow SB Nation blog, Football Study Hall, recently published an interesting post about strength of schedule. The short version is that they analyzed the strength of schedule for all D1 teams between 2003-2010 and discovered that...wait for it...none other than the Arkansas Razorbacks played the toughest slate of games in that time period (side note: 8 of the top 10 toughest schedules belonged to SEC teams).
The report also found that the Hogs had the 3rd highest single-season difficulty rating last year. That's somewhat surprising, given that the 2008 season, with its string of consecutive games against Alabama, Florida and Texas, or 2009, with Alabama, LSU and Florida on the road, both seemed harder, but props to the 2010 Razorbacks nonetheless.
Last year, of course, we had Alabama and LSU at home. Flipping those two games to the road this year would seem to make the 2011 schedule even harder, although we'll have to see how Mississippi State does, and Auburn won't be a a national championship level unless they can find room in the budget to buy a few top free agents between now and September.