Billy Brewer
Encyclopedia
Billy Brewer is a former head football coach for Southeastern Louisiana University
, Louisiana Tech University
and University of Mississippi
. He is the current host of an Ole Miss Rebel football post-game call-in show.
A native of Columbus, Mississippi, Brewer first came to Ole Miss as a player for the legendary Rebel teams of Johnny Vaught. He played quarterback, defensive back, punted and held for placekickers from 1957 to 1960, and Ole Miss named him to its "Team of the Century" in 1993.
from 1972 to 1973. In 1974, Brewer was named the tenth head coach at SLU and he coached for six seasons, from 1974 to 1979. His coaching record at Southeastern Louisiana was 38 wins, 24 losses, and 2 ties. As of the conclusion of the 2007 season, this ranks him third at Southeastern Louisiana in total wins and third at Southeastern Louisiana in winning percentage (.609).
17-0 in the first round of the Division I-AA (now Football Championship Subdivison) playoffs.
, who was 20-34-1 in the previous five seasons. Brewer's previous affiliation with Ole Miss made him a favorite in some circles at the university, which had had an "outsider" as head football coach since the end of Vaught's second stint in the position in 1974. Others, however, thought that Brewer's ties to Vaught and Vaught's associates were the only reasons he was considered for the position.
With Ole Miss behind the rest of the Southeastern Conference in terms of talent, Brewer never won championships at Ole Miss. However, many of his teams were known for over-achieving, embodying the scrappy persona of their combative coach. On the flip side, some of his teams that much was expected from failed to live up to those expectations.
In his first season, Brewer guided the Rebels to their first winning regular season since 1977 with a *7-4 mark. The Rebels also received their first bowl game invitation since 1971 and met Air Force
in the Independence Bowl
played in Shreveport, Louisiana
. Ole Miss dropped a 9-3 decision to the Falcons and finished with a 7-5 record. (*Ole Miss picked up a forfeit win over Tulane a year later.)
During his 11-year tenure, Brewer led the Rebels to six winning seasons and five bowls, including Ole Miss' 1991 New Year's Day Gator Bowl
appearance. The Jan. 1 bowl game was the program's first since 1969. He was named SEC Coach of the Year in 1986 (8-3-1 record), which saw the Rebels return to the national rankings for the first time in over a decade and just miss out on an SEC championship due to a 22-10 loss to the University of Tennessee the second to last game of the season.
However, the next year, with nine starters returning on both sides of the ball and with more expected from an Ole Miss football team since perhaps the early 1970s, the Rebels under Brewer flopped to a severely disappointing 3-8 record; being outscored 127-47 in the season's final three games. Following a 35-6 loss to a mediocre Kentucky team that put that year's team at 1-5, an anonymous group of students under the name Students Against Billy Brewer even took out an ad in the university student newspaper calling for Brewer's firing.
The next year's team, with little expected by most people, defeated Alabama in Tuscaloosa on their homecoming for the first time in history and came from behind to win two more games and looked to be in excellent position to secure a winning season and bowl berth. But the Rebels fell to Tulane in a devastating 14-9 upset on homecoming and also suffered a very heartbreaking loss to a 5-6 Tennessee team at home before rallying to trounce Mississippi State 33-6 in a severe thunderstorm in Jackson. Ole Miss would go 8-4 in 1989, and in the aforementioned 1990 season would notch 9 wins and again play Tennessee for the SEC title; although none of the nine wins came against a team with a winning record. Brewer garnered SEC Coach of the Year honors that season.
In 1992, Ole Miss posted yet another 9 win season during the Brewer administration and finished with a national top 15 ranking. But the next year and what turned out to be Brewer's last, Ole Miss would become the first team ever in college football to finish with a losing record (a forfeit from Alabama years later gave the team an in-the-books winning season) despite having the nation's number one team in total defense.
In his 11 seasons, Brewer led Ole Miss to eight Egg Bowl victories over in-state rival Mississippi State.
At Ole Miss, Brewer compiled a 67-56-3 record, making him the second winningest Ole Miss football coach behind Johnny Vaught
.
However, Brewer's tenure at Ole Miss was marred by allegations of recruiting improprieties that twice led to run-ins with the NCAA.
The NCAA banned the Rebels from post-season play and live television for the 1987 season after a two-year investigation found that Ole Miss recruits had received cash and other gifts from boosters.
The penalties were a source of embarrassment for Gerald Turner, then Ole Miss' chancellor and previously the head of the NCAA's President's Commission, and one of the first milestones in Turner's stormy relationship with Brewer.
"We have made some mistakes," Brewer said at a news conference following the announcement of the sanctions. "We are being punished for those mistakes, and we do not intend ever to be in this situation again."
However, in December 1993, Brewer and Ole Miss were again hit by allegations of recruiting violations. The NCAA would eventually cite the program for 15 transgressions, all of them serious and some of them embarrassingly lurid. An NCAA report said that Ole Miss boosters and coaches had offered recruits gifts, including cash and, in one case, a car. Boosters were also accused of breaking national rules by taking recruits 30 miles outside of Oxford, sometimes to strip clubs in Memphis.
Most damningly, the NCAA alleged that Ole Miss knowingly allowed the violations to occur, demonstrating a lack of institutional control of the football program.
The charges forced Athletics Director Warner Alford to resign in July 1994. One day later, Turner fired Brewer, granting him 30 days' paid leave but no other severance package for the three years remaining on his contract. Later that year, the NCAA, when announcing severe penalties against the Ole Miss football program, found Brewer guilty of unethical conduct. Specifically, it stated "There was unethical conduct by a former (Ole Miss) head football coach (Brewer), who was found to show a continuing pattern of disregard for NCAA rules in the operation of the football program ((Jackson, MS) Clarion Ledger, November 18, 1994, p.6-7C)."
Joe Lee Dunn
took over as interim coach for the 1994 season, directing the Rebels to a 4-7 record.
Brewer sued the University for his dismissal, eventually receiving several hundred thousand dollars. In the last several years, Brewer has taken a more prominent role again in Oxford, appearing on television ads and on a radio show.
(TE), Randy Baldwin
(RB), Willie Green
(WR), Tim Bowens
(DT), Norman Hand
(DT), Tony Bennett
(LB), Kelvin Pritchett
(DT), Everett Lindsay
(OT), and Freddie Joe Nunn
(DE). Horace Belton (RB), Calvin Favron (LB), Donald Dykes (DB), Anthony Vereen (DB).
Southeastern Louisiana University
Southeastern Louisiana University is a state-funded public university in Hammond, Louisiana, United States. It was founded in 1925 by Linus A. Sims, the principal of Hammond High School, as Hammond Junior College, located in a wing of the high school building. Sims succeeded in getting the campus...
, Louisiana Tech University
Louisiana Tech University
Louisiana Tech University, often referred to as Louisiana Tech, LA Tech, or Tech, is a coeducational public research university located in Ruston, Louisiana. Louisiana Tech is designated as a Tier 1 school in the national universities category by the 2012 U.S. News & World Report college rankings...
and University of Mississippi
University of Mississippi
The University of Mississippi, also known as Ole Miss, is a public, coeducational research university located in Oxford, Mississippi. Founded in 1844, the school is composed of the main campus in Oxford, four branch campuses located in Booneville, Grenada, Tupelo, and Southaven as well as the...
. He is the current host of an Ole Miss Rebel football post-game call-in show.
A native of Columbus, Mississippi, Brewer first came to Ole Miss as a player for the legendary Rebel teams of Johnny Vaught. He played quarterback, defensive back, punted and held for placekickers from 1957 to 1960, and Ole Miss named him to its "Team of the Century" in 1993.
Southeastern Louisiana
After a brief professional career, Brewer went into college coaching. He coached defensive backs the Southeastern Louisiana University Lions located in Hammond, LouisianaHammond, Louisiana
Hammond is the largest city in Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana, United States. The population was 20,049 at the 2009 census. It is home to Southeastern Louisiana University...
from 1972 to 1973. In 1974, Brewer was named the tenth head coach at SLU and he coached for six seasons, from 1974 to 1979. His coaching record at Southeastern Louisiana was 38 wins, 24 losses, and 2 ties. As of the conclusion of the 2007 season, this ranks him third at Southeastern Louisiana in total wins and third at Southeastern Louisiana in winning percentage (.609).
Louisiana Tech
Brewer was head coach at Louisiana Tech from 1980 through 1982, posting a record of 19 wins, 15 losses and a tie. His last season at Tech (1982) saw his Bulldogs win the Southland Conference title with a 10-3 record. They lost to DelawareUniversity of Delaware
The university is organized into seven colleges:* College of Agriculture and Natural Resources* College of Arts and Sciences* Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics* College of Earth, Ocean and Environment* College of Education and Human Development...
17-0 in the first round of the Division I-AA (now Football Championship Subdivison) playoffs.
Ole Miss
Brewer took over at Ole Miss in 1983, succeeding Steve SloanSteve Sloan
Stephen Charles Sloan is a former American football player, coach, and college athletics administrator. He played college football as a quarterback at the University of Alabama from 1962 to 1965 and then played for two seasons in the National Football League with the Atlanta Falcons...
, who was 20-34-1 in the previous five seasons. Brewer's previous affiliation with Ole Miss made him a favorite in some circles at the university, which had had an "outsider" as head football coach since the end of Vaught's second stint in the position in 1974. Others, however, thought that Brewer's ties to Vaught and Vaught's associates were the only reasons he was considered for the position.
With Ole Miss behind the rest of the Southeastern Conference in terms of talent, Brewer never won championships at Ole Miss. However, many of his teams were known for over-achieving, embodying the scrappy persona of their combative coach. On the flip side, some of his teams that much was expected from failed to live up to those expectations.
In his first season, Brewer guided the Rebels to their first winning regular season since 1977 with a *7-4 mark. The Rebels also received their first bowl game invitation since 1971 and met Air Force
United States Air Force Academy
The United States Air Force Academy is an accredited college for the undergraduate education of officer candidates for the United States Air Force. Its campus is located immediately north of Colorado Springs in El Paso County, Colorado, United States...
in the Independence Bowl
Independence Bowl
The Independence Bowl is a post-season NCAA-sanctioned Division I college football bowl game that is played annually at Independence Stadium in Shreveport, Louisiana, so named because it was inaugurated in the United States bicentennial year, 1976....
played in Shreveport, Louisiana
Shreveport, Louisiana
Shreveport is the third largest city in Louisiana. It is the principal city of the fourth largest metropolitan area in the state of Louisiana and is the 109th-largest city in the United States....
. Ole Miss dropped a 9-3 decision to the Falcons and finished with a 7-5 record. (*Ole Miss picked up a forfeit win over Tulane a year later.)
During his 11-year tenure, Brewer led the Rebels to six winning seasons and five bowls, including Ole Miss' 1991 New Year's Day Gator Bowl
Gator Bowl
The Gator Bowl is an annual college football bowl game played at EverBank Field in Jacksonville, Florida. Held continuously since 1946, it is the sixth oldest college bowl, as well as the first one ever televised nationally...
appearance. The Jan. 1 bowl game was the program's first since 1969. He was named SEC Coach of the Year in 1986 (8-3-1 record), which saw the Rebels return to the national rankings for the first time in over a decade and just miss out on an SEC championship due to a 22-10 loss to the University of Tennessee the second to last game of the season.
However, the next year, with nine starters returning on both sides of the ball and with more expected from an Ole Miss football team since perhaps the early 1970s, the Rebels under Brewer flopped to a severely disappointing 3-8 record; being outscored 127-47 in the season's final three games. Following a 35-6 loss to a mediocre Kentucky team that put that year's team at 1-5, an anonymous group of students under the name Students Against Billy Brewer even took out an ad in the university student newspaper calling for Brewer's firing.
The next year's team, with little expected by most people, defeated Alabama in Tuscaloosa on their homecoming for the first time in history and came from behind to win two more games and looked to be in excellent position to secure a winning season and bowl berth. But the Rebels fell to Tulane in a devastating 14-9 upset on homecoming and also suffered a very heartbreaking loss to a 5-6 Tennessee team at home before rallying to trounce Mississippi State 33-6 in a severe thunderstorm in Jackson. Ole Miss would go 8-4 in 1989, and in the aforementioned 1990 season would notch 9 wins and again play Tennessee for the SEC title; although none of the nine wins came against a team with a winning record. Brewer garnered SEC Coach of the Year honors that season.
In 1992, Ole Miss posted yet another 9 win season during the Brewer administration and finished with a national top 15 ranking. But the next year and what turned out to be Brewer's last, Ole Miss would become the first team ever in college football to finish with a losing record (a forfeit from Alabama years later gave the team an in-the-books winning season) despite having the nation's number one team in total defense.
In his 11 seasons, Brewer led Ole Miss to eight Egg Bowl victories over in-state rival Mississippi State.
At Ole Miss, Brewer compiled a 67-56-3 record, making him the second winningest Ole Miss football coach behind Johnny Vaught
Johnny Vaught
John Howard Vaught was an American college football coach at the University of Mississippi from 1947 to 1970 and again in 1973....
.
However, Brewer's tenure at Ole Miss was marred by allegations of recruiting improprieties that twice led to run-ins with the NCAA.
The NCAA banned the Rebels from post-season play and live television for the 1987 season after a two-year investigation found that Ole Miss recruits had received cash and other gifts from boosters.
The penalties were a source of embarrassment for Gerald Turner, then Ole Miss' chancellor and previously the head of the NCAA's President's Commission, and one of the first milestones in Turner's stormy relationship with Brewer.
"We have made some mistakes," Brewer said at a news conference following the announcement of the sanctions. "We are being punished for those mistakes, and we do not intend ever to be in this situation again."
However, in December 1993, Brewer and Ole Miss were again hit by allegations of recruiting violations. The NCAA would eventually cite the program for 15 transgressions, all of them serious and some of them embarrassingly lurid. An NCAA report said that Ole Miss boosters and coaches had offered recruits gifts, including cash and, in one case, a car. Boosters were also accused of breaking national rules by taking recruits 30 miles outside of Oxford, sometimes to strip clubs in Memphis.
Most damningly, the NCAA alleged that Ole Miss knowingly allowed the violations to occur, demonstrating a lack of institutional control of the football program.
The charges forced Athletics Director Warner Alford to resign in July 1994. One day later, Turner fired Brewer, granting him 30 days' paid leave but no other severance package for the three years remaining on his contract. Later that year, the NCAA, when announcing severe penalties against the Ole Miss football program, found Brewer guilty of unethical conduct. Specifically, it stated "There was unethical conduct by a former (Ole Miss) head football coach (Brewer), who was found to show a continuing pattern of disregard for NCAA rules in the operation of the football program ((Jackson, MS) Clarion Ledger, November 18, 1994, p.6-7C)."
Joe Lee Dunn
Joe Lee Dunn
-External links:* *...
took over as interim coach for the 1994 season, directing the Rebels to a 4-7 record.
Brewer sued the University for his dismissal, eventually receiving several hundred thousand dollars. In the last several years, Brewer has taken a more prominent role again in Oxford, appearing on television ads and on a radio show.
Players in the NFL
NFL players coached by Brewer in college include Wesley WallsWesley Walls
Charles Wesley Walls is a former American football tight end who played 14 seasons in the National Football League.-Early career:...
(TE), Randy Baldwin
Randy Baldwin
Randy Chadwick Baldwin is a retired American professional football player who played six seasons in the National Football League as a running back and kick returner for the Minnesota Vikings, Cleveland Browns, Carolina Panthers and Baltimore Ravens.After playing college football for the University...
(RB), Willie Green
Willie Green
Willie J. Green is an American professional basketball player who last played for the New Orleans Hornets in the NBA. He was selected in the second round of the 2003 NBA Draft by the Seattle SuperSonics and later acquired by Philadelphia from Seattle in a draft-night trade for the draft rights...
(WR), Tim Bowens
Tim Bowens
Tim Bowens is a former American Football defensive tackle, was chosen with the 20th pick of the NFL draft by the Miami Dolphins. The Dolphins received some initial criticism for the pick, because he was overweight and had only played 9 gamed in his college career at Mississippi...
(DT), Norman Hand
Norman Hand
Norman L. Hand was an American football defensive tackle in the NFL. He last played with the New York Giants in 2004. He also played with the Seattle Seahawks, the New Orleans Saints, the San Diego Chargers and the Miami Dolphins...
(DT), Tony Bennett
Tony Bennett
Tony Bennett is an American singer of popular music, standards, show tunes, and jazz....
(LB), Kelvin Pritchett
Kelvin Pritchett
Kelvin Pritchett was an American football defensive tackle.Pritchett was a first round selection by the Dallas Cowboys in the 1991 NFL Draft out of the University of Mississippi. However, Pritchett was traded to the Detroit Lions, who he played for, during 10 years and two stints with the team. He...
(DT), Everett Lindsay
Everett Lindsay
Everett Lindsay and raised in Raleigh, North Carolina, attended the University of Mississippi from 1989-1992 where he walked on and anchored the offensive line under then head coach Billy Brewer. Lindsay was a two-time First-Team All-SEC and First-Team All-America selection in 1991 and 1992...
(OT), and Freddie Joe Nunn
Freddie Joe Nunn
Freddie Joe Nunn is an American former professional football player who was selected by the St. Louis Cardinals in the 1st round of the 1985 NFL Draft. He started his career as a defensive end and later moved to the linebacker position...
(DE). Horace Belton (RB), Calvin Favron (LB), Donald Dykes (DB), Anthony Vereen (DB).