ATLANTA – Alabama’s 24-7 win over Florida State on Saturday night was just the tip of the college football iceberg this season at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
“This will be the greatest year for college football in Atlanta’s history,” said Gary Stokan, the CEO of Peach Bowl, Inc. “We’ve started with this GOAT game as we’ve called it, the greatest opener of all-time, and then we have Georgia Tech-Tennessee on Monday night, which is an old SEC rivalry.
“This is the 50th anniversary season of the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl, and it will be played on Jan. 1 leading into the Rose Bowl. Who would have ever thought that would have happened? A week after that, we’ve got the national championship game. It’s going to be a heck of a year.”
Saturday’s announced crowd of 76,330 was the largest for a Chick-fil-A Kickoff Game.
Mercedes-Benz Stadium was completed last month at a cost of $1.6 billion – AT&T Stadium in the Dallas suburb of Arlington was completed in 2009 at a cost of $1.3 billion – and the new home of the Atlanta Falcons has a retractable roof.