Over the years, Alabama’s Nick Saban and now Auburn head coach Hugh Freeze remained close. Their relationship formed when Freeze was the head coach at Ole Miss and at one point, Saban tried to hire Freeze to join his staff.

Now in 2023, Freeze was asked during an SEC conference call with reporters about his conversations with Saban. He said Saban tried to hire him around when he was hired at Liberty. Freeze said Saban had been helpful to him during the time after his resignation amid a scandal at Ole Miss involving contacting escorts on his university-issued device and a “pattern of personal misconduct,” according to the SEC.

“He was so good to me in my two years out and truthfully it was when I got to Liberty that there were a couple of occasions that Coach Saban and I had great conversations about that,” Freeze said Wednesday. “They just never seemed to work out for one reason or another. The most real was after I got to Liberty and his coordinator left.”

AL.com previously reported there was mutual interest between Saban and Freeze to hire the former Ole Miss coach who had beaten Saban twice. Alabama had an opening at the position. But SEC commissioner Greg Sankey pushed against bringing Freeze back into the SEC. In 2020, AL.com wrote, that Sankey told Freeze, Saban and the Alabama program that hiring Freeze would look bad for the SEC while Ole Miss dealt with NCAA penalties from his tenure. Sankey wanted Freeze out of the conference for some time before having him back at an SEC school.

The SEC did not comment for the AL.com story.

Alabama ultimately promoted Mike Locksley and hired Josh Gattis as co-offensive coordinators. Locksley is now the head coach at Maryland and Gattis is his offensive coordinator.

On Wednesday, Freeze did not say the SEC necessarily “blocked” his potential hire at Alabama, but instead attributed his decision to stay at Liberty to the timing.

“That was very, very hard on me there because I had already gotten there and hired a few people and that would have been very difficult for me to leave,” Freeze said. “I think Coach understood that. I’ve said it before and I know I’m at Auburn and he’s at Alabama, but he and Miss Terry have been very, very good to Jill and I. I appreciate him even entertaining the thought that that could happen during those times.”

The two coaches kept up with each other during Freeze’s stint at Liberty. Now back in the SEC, Freeze called Saban “the king” during SEC Media Days in Nashville.

“I want to measure ourselves against the gold standard,” Freeze said of comparing Auburn to Alabama during SEC Media Days.

Saban was complimentary of Freeze during his availability session at SEC Media Days. Asked about his relationship with Freeze by AL.com, Saban said the two are still good friends.

“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.”