Despite winning five straight SEC games, including two road contests against Texas A&M and Tennessee, the Missouri Tigers find themselves in the same, exact position where they’ve been all season — as the underdog.

Missouri opened up as a 1.5 point underdog at home against the Arkansas Razorbacks, a team that has three less wins than the Tigers.

The implications are simple — win and you’re in. Missouri will look to finish 3-0 in November, knowing during the entire stretch a single loss would end its hopes of a repeat trip to the SEC Championship. With a surging Arkansas team visiting Faurot Field this weekend, head coach Gary Pinkel doesn’t expect anything to be handed to his team.

“Really, if you look at how they’ve played all year, they’ve been playing everybody close,” Pinkel said during his press conference. “They’re a very good football team. What we see now with their success doesn’t surprise me. They’ve done a great job building that football program.”

Friday’s matchup not only has postseason implications, but some historical context as well. When the Razorbacks and Tigers meet, it’ll mark the first official game of the Battle Line Rivalry and the first conference contest between the two schools.

As Missouri’s newest annual rival, the timing and set up of the rivalry series resembles the replacement for Missouri’s former Border War rivalry against Kansas, which took place at the end of every season. Pinkel believes this new rivalry with the Hogs could take on a similar form.

“Our players are competitors and they certainly have great respect for Arkansas,” Pinkel explained. “I compare this to a little to the Kansas rivalry. It didn’t happen overnight. It happened over time.”

“It’s a great rivalry and [Arkansas] has a great university … For our fans, it will most likely be either every Friday or Saturday after Thanksgiving.”

The obvious challenge in facing the Razorbacks comes with stopping their talented running duo — Jonathan Williams and Alex Collins. They currently hold the fourth and fifth-highest rushing numbers in the SEC at 1,013 and 965 yards, respectively.

And while Williams and Collins are a tough duo to contain, the more difficult task may be dealing with the Hogs’ offensive line, which averages a heavier weight than any NFL offensive line (328 pounds).

“They’re very big and physical,” Pinkel said. “That’s [head coach Bret Bielema’s] background as he did it at Wisconsin also. Their running backs are good players. They can turn short gains into big plays. It’s going to be a challenge. We’ve played some big people before, but they really have some great size.”

Missouri and Arkansas will kick the Battle Line Rivalry off at 2:30 p.m. ET on CBS this Friday.