AUBURN — It took Auburn football coach Hugh Freeze five years to break back into the SEC following his resignation from Ole Miss in July 2017.

But could he have returned to the conference sooner?

Freeze said on the SEC teleconference call Wednesday that he and Alabama coach Nick Saban had "great conversations" over the years about Freeze potentially joining Saban's staff as an offensive coordinator. For whatever reasons, though, those discussions never led to a hiring.

"How real it was, that's probably a question for coach Saban," Freeze said. "He was so good to me in my two years out (out of coaching), 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. They just never seemed to work out for one reason or another."

Saban has hired four offensive coordinators since Freeze left the conference: Mike Locksley (2018), Steve Sarkisian (2019-20), Bill O’Brien (2021-22) and Tommy Rees, who left Notre Dame to join the Crimson Tide this offseason.

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"The most real was after I got to Liberty (in December 2018) and his coordinator left. That was very, very hard on me there, but I had already gotten there (to Liberty) and hired a few people. That would've been very difficult for me to leave, and I think coach understood that.

"I've said it before: 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."

Richard Silva is the Auburn athletics beat writer for the Montgomery Advertiser. He can be reached via email at rsilva@gannett.com or on Twitter @rich_silva18.

This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: Hugh Freeze: Was Auburn football's coach ever a candidate to be Alabama's OC?