How much will opening at Baylor impact Auburn's fall camp?

The Tigers won't be able to fool anyone in Week 1 this season — and they know they're going to have to be quite sharp for this opener.

(Austin Perryman/Auburn Tigers)

ATLANTA — If SEC Media Days are the mile markers to let you know football season is almost here, Auburn is speeding past them faster than ever.

When the Tigers’ representatives — head coach Hugh Freeze, quarterback Jackson Arnold, defensive end Keldric Faulk and center Connor Lew — went through the parade of interviews Tuesday in Atlanta, they did so exactly two weeks before the start of fall camp.

Auburn will open preseason practices on July 29. If that feels like it’s earlier than usual, it’s because it is. The offseason, as we know it, is coming to an end soon.

And the Tigers flying through it at top speed is a good metaphor for what’s to come — because they know they can’t just cruise into a make-or-break 2025 season.

The reason for the earlier start time, as Freeze explained Monday night, is so that Auburn can get exactly three weeks of fall camp before its opening game week: A Friday night showdown with Baylor on the road.

“I think that game’s vital,” Freeze said Tuesday morning.

The Baylor game will mark the first time Auburn has opened a season with a power-conference opponent since facing Kentucky to start the all-SEC, COVID-affected 2020 season. The year before that, Auburn kicked off with Oregon in Dallas.

In Freeze’s all-important third season on the Plains, there will be no fool’s gold to be found in Week 1. Auburn won’t be able to crush an overmatched opponent in a paycheck home game before moving on to more serious competition.

And that’s been a theme for Auburn football for the last decade and change: Lighting up the scoreboard in the season opener, only to fall straight back down to earth in the first test against a quality opponent.

Just look at the most recent examples of this sequence…