The SEC spring meetings, an annual conference of school presidents, athletics directors and coaches among others, will take place next week in Destin, Fla.

Recent news items like the alleged assault by a Mississippi State signee, the arrests of Alabama players and Ole Miss’ self-imposed penalties may not come up directly, but they’re likely to be mentioned in the media commentary during the meetings.

CBS Sports senior writer Jon Solomon discussed those topics and more with SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, starting with the negative headlines of the offseason.

“You cited four or five (negative stories),” Sankey said. “There have been hundreds, if not thousands, of great stories around this conference. While we’re not perfect, we do things exceedingly well and young people can receive an education and have tremendous success here. When there are issues that deal with the legal system, we have the legal system deal with those. When there are enforcement issues, we have conference policies on how we interact as a conference office and how schools should deal with those appropriately.”

Sankey also took pride in a lack of tainted titles.

“We’ve had incredible success over the last 10 to 15 years, and we have not been returning trophies and vacating championships,” Sankey said, “and we need to all focus on that collectively.”

Changes to the transfer rules, specifically which types of offenders will be barred, is also expected to be discussed, per Solomon:

In addition to the SEC’s definition of “serious misconduct” from last year, the league is proposing it also includes “dating violence or stalking, or conduct of a nature that creates serious concerns about the safety of others.” In other words, the SEC transfer ban could expand to include violence or threats against men, not just women.

Any new rules about misconduct are unlikely to apply to incoming freshmen, with Sankey saying that signees are likely to commit “something that may be more of a youthful mistake.”

Transfers will be the focuse of any changes to the rules.

“I think our universities are capable of handling those decisions independent right now of a conference rule (on signees), and that’s actually been verified by our working group,” Sankey said. “It was a good topic of conversation, but at the moment the focus is on transfers.”

One issue unlikely to garner any serious discussion is division realignment in sports which use the current arrangement, such as football.

“It is cyclical,” Sankey said of the SEC West’s dominance brought up by Solomon. “We’ve had great competition in divisions for nearly 25 years and we expanded and we’ve kept divisions, and we look forward to our division champions to continue to meet in Atlanta for the SEC Championship Game.”