Alabama played the last college football game in the Georgia Dome.

And the Crimson Tide will be among the first two NCAA teams to take the field at the opulent stadium being built next door.

One week before the Tide is set to face Florida State on Sept. 2 in the Chick-fil-A Kickoff, Mercedes-Benz Stadium will open Aug. 26, according to Atlanta Falcons president and CEO Rich McKay.

"We will be ready," he said at SEC Media Days.

There were questions as late as April about whether construction would be completed in time for the facility to be fully operational. But those concerns have since been allayed.

McKay discussed the features of the 71,000-seat building that will replace the Georgia Dome, the former site of the SEC Championship game that is scheduled to be imploded Nov. 20. The new domain of the Atlanta Falcons has 83,000 square feet of LED boards and an unusual eight-panel retractable roof.

"We did not want to build a better Georgia Dome," McKay said. "If we would have done that, we would have renovated the Georgia Dome. We truly wanted to change the game."