Billy Brewer
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- For the MLB pitcher, see Billy Brewer.
- For the NFL defensive back, see Homer Brewer.
Billy Brewer (born 1939) is a former head football coach for Southeastern Louisiana University, Louisiana Tech University and University of Mississippi and the current host of Hotty Toddy Hotline, 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.
After a brief professional career, Brewer went into college coaching. He coached defensive backs for Southeastern Louisiana University from 1972 to 1973 and served as the Lions' head coach from 1974 to 1979. He was head coach at Louisiana Tech from 1980 through 1982.
Brewer took over at Ole Miss in 1983, succeeding Steve Sloan, 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 6-5 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 6-6 record.
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 1970's, 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.
NFL players coached by Brewer in college include Wesley Walls (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).
| Preceded by Pat L. Patterson |
Louisiana Tech Head Football Coach 1980–1982 |
Succeeded by A.L. Williams |
| Preceded by Steve Sloan |
University of Mississippi Head Football Coaches 1983–1993 |
Succeeded by Joe Lee Dunn |
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