Conversations with Billy Brewer are always entertaining and sometimes printable.

I ran into the former Ole Miss coach at lunch Wednesday between visits with Joe Walker and Mike Bianco.

We talked about many things Ole Miss football, one being the Rebels' defense under new co-coordinator Dave Wommack. I told Brewer I liked what I saw in the spring, and he agreed.

He compared it to the defense of Joe Lee Dunn, formerly his coordinator at Ole Miss and later at a number of other addresses.

Brewer found it interesting that Dunn and former Kentucky coach Hal Mumme – of the wide open spread offense – have worked together for so long.

Mumme was at Kentucky during my days on the MSU beat and always had high praise for Joe Lee's defenses. “It seems like they're coming from everywhere, and he's playing with 13 people,” Mumme would say.

Dunn finally joined Mumme in 2008 at New Mexico State. That staff made it just one season, though. Now they are getting ready for their fourth season at Division III McMurry in the American Southwest Conference in Abilene, Texas.

Brewer finds the sustained coaching relationship interesting, because Joe Lee was not in favor of the idea of hiring Mumme as offensive coordinator at Ole Miss when Mumme was coaching at Valdosta State.

Joe Lee opposed hiring Mumme, because he believed Mummer's style of offense would have the defense on the field too much.

I never covered Brewer's Ole Miss teams, so I didn't see Joe Lee on a regular basis until he was coaching at State.

We changed beats at the Journal before he parted ways with Jackie Sherrill. I did a story on the personable and eccentric Dunn when he was transitioning from MSU to Memphis.

MSU was the first job he did not leave of his own accord, and I remember him telling me that his children were having a hard time understanding why “Coach Sherrill fired their daddy.”

Also on staff at McMurry is Kendall Roberson, of Calhoun City, who played cornerback for Dunn at MSU. Roberson coaches the secondary and is assistant head coach.

McMurry went 9-3 last year, 7-1 and second place in the league.