Rece Davis is putting some pressure on the SEC, and the ESPN “College GameDay” host believes this week of nonconference matchups will go a long way to determining the national narrative around the SEC.

“This upcoming week is a gargantuan one for perception of the SEC,” Davis said on the “College GameDay” podcast with Pete Thamel. “It’s not just Alabama-Texas.”

The league is still trying to bounce back from South Carolina’s loss to North Carolina after Davis said each team came into the game with similar teams and comparable positions in their respective leagues.

Davis also mentioned Arizona-Mississippi State, Auburn and Cal, Ole Miss and Tulane and Texas A&M at Miami, and how the SEC must fare well in those matchups.

“If you let the SEC drop a couple of those, particularly the high-profile ones, doesn’t mean the SEC stinks, doesn’t mean they’ll have more draft choices,” Davis said. “But it does mean that this perception and evaluation of schedules, as we start to match them up, they won’t have this giant edge because they will have lost a number of these games.”

Davis added that this is big both for people who love the SEC, and love to hate the league. If the SEC goes 2-3 or 3-2, then people will poke holes.

“You let them go 1-4 or, somehow, lose them all, which is unlikely, but, if they did? I mean there would be a celebration outside of that group,” Davis said. “There would probably be a few SEC apologists running to say, ‘Well, Texas is coming to the SEC next year!’ and try to claim that victory.”

Davis is looking ahead to College Football Playoff resume talk, and other

“It’s a really big weekend, I think, for the SEC, for those against it. And, really, for how we should evaluate schedules. Because that’s what conference strength is about,” Davis said. “The bragging right stuff is fun on social media. But what it’s about, to me, is, when you’re determining who the best teams are, evaluating the schedule. This idea that playing an SEC schedule is just inherently tougher, most of the time over the last 15 years or so, has been true. But maybe that’s not the case this year. That will go a long way toward determining that – what happens this week in those nonconference games.”