For the past week, it seemed like Hugh Freeze was bound to return to the SEC.

Reports indicated that the former Ole Miss coach was a candidate for offensive coordinator vacancies at Tennessee and Auburn, though he ultimately decided to become the new head coach at fledgling FBS program Liberty.

Freeze joined Friday’s “The Paul Finebaum Show” to discuss his last few weeks and his relationship with the SEC as a whole. Freeze said he felt that he had support in the coaching community despite his scandalous dismissal from Ole Miss, though getting a school’s administration to back him proved a little more challenging.

“It seemed like there was always a hurdle, a hurdle here, a hurdle there – which I get,” Freeze said.

But Freeze seemed to be at peace with the move to Liberty, even if meant some time away from the SEC

“I think it was wise for my family to move away from the conference, and hopefully one day have the opportunity to come back,” he said.

Freeze rose to prominence from 2012-16 in Oxford, during which the Rebels went 39-25, beat Alabama twice and won a Sugar Bowl. But Ole Miss administrators forced out the high-profile coach in July 2017 for what they deemed “a pattern of personal misconduct,” namely a series of phone calls to an escort service.

How has Freeze handled that over the past year-and-a-half?

“I was bitter at a few people,” he said with a chuckle, “and really, in the last two years, I’ve let that go, too.”

Freeze went on to insist that “I’m a better football coach now than I was when we were beating Nick Saban” and state his long-term goals at Liberty, which just completed a 6-6 campaign in the program’s first season at the FBS level.

“You probably can’t tell me who the second person was to step foot on America, Paul,” Freeze said. “I know I probably couldn’t tell you. Christopher Columbus was probably first. Well, these kids have never been to a bowl game. I’m excited to be the first coach to take them to a bowl game.”