Rare SEC-Pac 12 clash to open 2018 season as Auburn, Washington agree to play

The 2018 Chick-fil-A Kickoff Classic at Mercedes-Benz Stadium will be a lot of fun

Mercedes-Benz Stadium isn't even finished being built yet, but it already has one big college football game scheduled to be played there.

It was announced Thursday morning that Auburn and Washington will open the 2018 season in the Chick-fil-A Kickoff game on Sept. 1 in the soon-to-be-completed Atlanta stadium. Barring a postseason matchup between now and then -- and both teams are still in the College Football Playoff hunt -- it will be the first time the two schools have met on the football field.

The SEC and Pac-12 have played 10 times over the past seven years, which is way up on average from the five times they played in the 1990s and 20 times in the 2000s.

It's a rare chance to see an SEC team matched up with a Pac-12 team matched up on opening weekend, though we did get to see one this season between USC and Alabama, as well as UCLA and Texas A&M.

Washington is the first team from the Pac-12 to play in the Chick-fil-A Kickoff game, which began in 2008, so it's not as historic event as, say, the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series, but it is a first.

So it has that going for it.

It also has us wondering if this recent spate of games between the SEC and Pac-12 will lead to even more matchups in the future. It would be fun to see a matchup of two of the country's leading producers of high school talent in a game between Florida and USC. I'd also love to see something happen between LSU and Stanford, or maybe Oregon and Ole Miss.

Fingers crossed?