DESTIN, Fla. — As rumors of widespread expansion heated up around the country Thursday, the idea of adding teams to the SEC was once again a hot topic amongst reporters and a non-issue for the conference brass.

While an Internet outlet covering the University of Texas reported Thursday that the Pac-10 had extended invitations to six Big 12 programs, including the Longhorns, the SEC’s presidents met during the third day of the league meetings and avoided the topic altogether.

“I’ve only heard rumors, and we haven’t had any discussion about that,” Georgia president Michael Adams said of SEC expansion. “Thus far, that’s not been one of the topics, and it did not come up at all in the president’s meeting.”

SEC commissioner Mike Slive answered more than a dozen expansion-related inquiries after meeting with the school presidents, but he never wavered from his previous stated opinion that the league will analyze the issue only after formal changes are instigated by other conferences. Slive did acknowledge that expansion would be discussed during today’s session.

That’s a policy Adams agrees with, and said the SEC shouldn’t be in a hurry to react to speculation of any large-scale paradigm shifts in college football.

“There’s a pretty strong sense among the 12 presidents and the commissioner right now that the SEC is in the best shape it’s ever been,” Adams said. “So we feel pretty good about things. If the landscape changes then we’ll analyze it, but I don’t believe we have to do anything.”

While he was in no rush to consider the idea of expansion, however, Slive was quick to reject the idea that the SEC was resting on its established success rather than proactively looking ahead.

“We’re not complacent,” Slive said. “There’s never a moment when you don’t want to get better.”

Early signing day unlikely

The proposition of establishing an early signing day for high school football players verbally committed to a college program has been kicked around at the SEC’s meetings for the past several years, but coaches appear no closer to a consensus on the issue this time around.

Proponents of the idea suggest that schools are spending too many resources trying to keep players committed during the frenetic final few months before the February signing day, but as Georgia head coach Mark Richt argued, an early signing day only shifts the burden of recruiting from December and January into the heart of the regular season.

“We’ve agreed that (an early signing day) is good with a couple parameters added to it — that anybody who signed early wouldn’t take any official visits until after they signed they could make an official visit to the team that they chose,” Richt said. “We didn’t want it to escalate in season and it would cause everybody a lot of grief trying to handle that.”

That doesn’t appear likely, which means the issue is unlikely to gain acceptance during today’s executive meetings.

Toned down in Tennessee

A year ago, the star of the SEC meetings was then-Tennessee head coach Lane Kiffin, who had stirred controversy by calling out Florida head coach Urban Meyer earlier in the year then ratcheted up the excitement during a confrontation with South Carolina’s Steve Spurrier outside an elevator at the league’s meetings.

This year, Kiffin is gone, and his replacement, Derek Dooley, was a bit more understated in his approach.

“It is different from my predecessor in that I wasn’t trying to make headlines,” Dooley said. “Our team needed somebody to get their arms around them and start forging a new plan. At the end of the day, a good headline in February or March isn’t going to win you any football games.”

Guest of honor?

After years as an assistant to Bobby Bowden at Florida State, Richt was asked this week if he was feeling a bit weird about entering his first college football season without his mentor on the sidelines in Tallahassee.

It wasn’t strange, Richt said. Instead, he’s hopeful Bowden will take him up on an offer to visit a different sideline this fall.

“I’m trying to talk him into coming to at least one Georgia game this year,” Richt said.

Extra points

ESPN executives met with the SEC presidents during Thursday’s meetings to discuss the network’s multi-billion-dollar deal with the league, and Adams said both sides remained enthusiastic about the relationship. “The (numbers) aren’t good — they’re phenomenal,” Adams said. “Ratings are good, ESPN’s happy, we’re happy, and obviously the money is good.” … Among the policies scheduled to come to a vote during today’s executive session is a change that would loosen restrictions on text messaging recruits, but Adams said he didn’t expect that to pass. “It was overwhelmingly against re-opening text messaging among the coaches, and that’s a pretty dramatic shift,” Adams said. … Another possible rule change could create a conference-wide policy on class attendance for athletes, but Adams said he expected those rules to remain at the discretion of individual schools.