Former Ole Miss head coach Hugh Freeze reportedly visited Alabama’s football offices in Tuscaloosa on Monday. Maybe Freeze was just taking a tour, but more likely he was there to discuss job opportunities on the Crimson Tide’s coaching staff.

The Tuscaloosa News reported Nick Saban wants to hire Freeze, who pulled off the exceedingly rare feat of beating Saban two times while he was in charge in Oxford.

Aaron Suttles writes that Saban “respects Freeze’s offensive mind” and is aiming to hire him to an on-field coaching position. Freeze joining the staff as an offensive analyst — a popular path for ex-head coaches like Steve Sarkisian and Mike Locksley in recent years — is another possible outcome, he writes. A potential hitch is that SEC commissioner Greg Sankey might not approve of Freeze-to-Tuscaloosa, because the coach left his last SEC job under terrible circumstances.

Ole Miss parted with Freeze in July, when one scandal revealed another and led to his exit. Discovery in a lawsuit against Ole Miss by former head coach Houston Nutt revealed calls by Freeze to an escort service’s number, on a university phone. The subject of that lawsuit was a claim by Nutt that Freeze’s Ole Miss program had unfairly pinned the program’s NCAA compliance problems on Nutt.

The NCAA announced sanctions for Ole Miss on Dec. 1. In addition to scholarship reductions, free transfers out for seniors, and other penalties, the NCAA tacked on an additional one-year bowl ban to the self-imposed ban Ole Miss played under in 2017. The Rebels are next postseason-eligible in 2019. They’ve lost a couple of high-profile transfers, most notably quarterback Shea Patterson to Michigan.

An outcome that’s now on the table will make Ole Miss fans scream.

Alabama’s going to the Playoff next year, in the same way that water’s going to be wet next year and fire’s going to be hot next year. Freeze’s offensive knowledge might help the Tide get there, but this team that just won the title on the strength of a bunch of true freshmen is going to play in its fifth Playoff in five years. I’ve already accepted it.

So if Freeze indeed lands at Alabama, he’ll be in the Playoff next winter, just as Ole Miss is wrapping up a two-year postseason absence that Freeze’s program caused by getting into trouble with the NCAA. My guess is that Rebels fans would respond positively.