The biggest thing Arkansas has going against it is the lack of in-state talent. The University is lovely, Fayetteville is a great town, the stadium is impressive, and the fan support is there. But you can't fix the talent pool.

For example, for the 2022 class the State of Arkansas has just four four-star caliber recruits per 247 composite. The 2021 class had just one four-star caliber recruit. The 2020 class had just two. By comparison, Texas has 51 such players in the 2022 class, 51 in 2021, and 55 in 2020.

So Arkansas has to pluck a large portion of its recruiting class each and every year from talent-rich states like Texas, Mississippi, or Louisiana. And all of those talent pools are saturated by local SEC and/or other heavyweight P5 programs.

Even Mizzou (which is also the sole P5 program in its state) has eight in-state four-star caliber recruits in 2022, five in 2021, and five in 2020. Nearly three times the amount of in-state talent as Arkansas had to offer. Mizzou also has the benefit of having a lack of strong FBS competition in the neighboring states of Kansas and Illinois, and has a lot of success recruiting talent from those places. Arkansas doesn't really have that luxury, with Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi being its neighbors. True, they can recruit against Mizzou, but most of our talent does not come from the southern part of Missouri, where Arkansas has a solid foothold.