This may be the new look of the Iron Bowl, but this fall won’t be the first matchup of new Auburn head coach Hugh Freeze and Alabama’s Nick Saban.

While he was at Ole Miss, Freeze beat Saban in the 2014 and 2015 seasons — though the 2014 win was vacated after NCAA violations in Freeze’s program. But in the six years since Freeze last made his own SEC Media Days rounds, Saban said they’ve maintained a friendship — one they both expect to be quite competitive now.

AL.com reporters asked Saban about his relationship with Freeze at his press conference in the main media room Wednesday.

“Well, I’ve always had a tremendous amount of respect for Hugh Freeze, he’s a good friend,” Saban said. “I’m sure he’ll do a very good job at Auburn.”

Saban described Freeze as a good recruiter and believes he will do the same at Auburn.

But being friends doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to compete. He compared it to playing golf: You play golf with your friends, but both Saban and his friends want to win the round.

“When the game is over, you’re still friends and that’s the way it will be probably with this,” Saban said. It’s a great rivalry, the Iron Bowl, and being successful in that game usually happens some significant impact on the SEC and the West Division. So it’s a game that’s really, really important to us to try to continue to be able to do the things that we need to do to be able to have success, and when we play down there, it’s always been challenging.”

On Tuesday, Freeze called Saban “the king.” During a segment with SEC Network, Freeze said Saban encouraged him during his two years between resigning at Ole Miss and taking the head coach job at Liberty, and maintains respect for the Alabama head coach because of that.

During his main media session, Freeze said he spent enough time talking to rival coaches — implying Saban — that he needed to hire an offensive coordinator to completely change his terminology in order to not give away his plays.

Though Freeze, like Saban, has the same competitive mindset against a friend.

“But at the same time, I want to beat him,” Freeze said on SEC Network. “I want to measure ourselves against the gold standard.”