Hugh Freeze has agreed to a deal to become Auburn’s next head football coach.

Freeze has spent the past four seasons at Liberty, where he took the Flames to unprecedented heights. He’s widely regarded as one of the top offensive minds in the game. This will be Freeze’s second head-coaching stint in the SEC, with him having led Ole Miss’ program from 2012 to 2016. He beat Alabama and Nick Saban in back-to-back seasons in 2014 and 2015 and capped the 2015 season with the Rebels’ first Sugar Bowl victory since 1970.

But in the weeks leading up to the start of preseason practice in 2017, Freeze resigned after Ole Miss officials discovered he had made a series of calls to multiple numbers associated with an escort service. Ole Miss was placed on NCAA probation in 2017 for violations that occurred in part under Freeze, and the sanctions included a two-year bowl ban.

Freeze, while cited by the NCAA Division I Committee on Infractions for failure to monitor his assistant coaches and the school’s boosters, did not receive a show-cause penalty and “promoted an atmosphere of compliance,” according to the NCAA report.

New Auburn athletic director John Cohen, who was hired Oct. 31, had narrowed his search to Ole Miss’ Lane Kiffin and Freeze. Kiffin said on Saturday that he was staying at Ole Miss and signing a new deal worth $9 million per year.