Hugh Freeze wasn’t sure he’d be back in the SEC. When he resigned from Ole Miss in 2017 in scandal, a return to the conference wasn’t something he had time to think about it.

Frankly, he said it didn’t cross his mind again until he began winning at his Liberty. And now, six years later, Freeze is back.

On Tuesday, the whirlwind of the SEC Media Days — the eager fans waiting in the lobby, the shuttling around from press conference to press conference, podium to podium, TV interview to social media photoshoot and a flight back to Birmingham right after it all for a speaking event — hit Hugh Freeze again. It was a day that could have been contentious. The questions on Freeze’s past, as he stood in front of the whole conference’s media, were obvious.

Instead, Freeze handled the day with poise and reflection — though kept his speech vague in doing so. He described his resignation and the scandals including phone calls to an escort service as “the way it ended.” He didn’t directly discuss the phone calls or other violations found in an investigation into his Ole Miss program.

But Freeze continued with a long remark on what he’s learned in the time between his SEC coaching jobs.

“As time passes and things tend to settle back in and you work through — I tell people all the time, I think that one of the greatest judges of people, and our players included and the people I come in contact with, are when you experience disappointment, failure, whether it was of your own doing or whether it was circumstances that come into your life,” Freeze said. “Those are tough circumstances, but how a person responds to those and reacts to those probably tells you more about them than the successes do.”

The questions in the main media room then shifted away from his past and onto his future, on how he can mend Auburn and move forward. If Freeze wanted to set a tone for moving quite literally past his past, then his media days press conference was the start.