As far as college football venues go, there is none like Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
Doubling as the home of the Atlanta Falcons and Atlanta United FC, the projected $1.6-billion complex has served as the site of the SEC Championship Game since 2017, the same year it opened. And while its predecessor, the Georgia Dome, has its own mark in history (hosting the SEC title game in Atlanta from 1994-2016), Mercedes-Benz Stadium is all but the new standard for modern-day arenas.
"Not only is it one of the most spectacular football stadiums in the country," Shell Rotella presents on CBS Sports' 'What's Inside the SEC' series said, "but it was also graded the most sustainable sports venue in the world, powered by 4,000 solar PV panels with renewable energy that can last through several games and matches with one charge."
Additionally, every light you see inside the stadium, which held a record 77,430 for the College Football Playoff National Championship in January, is LED, which reduces energy usage by 60 percent.
And that's not even mentioning perhaps the most iconic feature of Mercedes-Benz Stadium, which hosts Alabama and Georgia for the 2018 SEC Championship on Saturday -- an eight-piece, automatic retractable roof composed of more than 21,000 tons of steel and 1.8 million pounds of trusses. Its smooth pinwheel resemblance flows right into a window into Atlanta, where fans can also find some of the most affordable food and drink concession prices in a major sports facility.
