The Millsaps Majors football team represents Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi. They compete in the NCAA's Division III and the Southern Athletic Association. Millsaps's all-time record in football is 380 wins, 356 losses and 36 ties (.516). The gridiron Majors have posted two undefeated regular seasons in their history (1980 & 2008), earned three NCAA playoff tournament berths (1975, 2006 & 2008) and claimed six Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference championships (1991, 1996, 2006, 2007, 2008 & 2009). Its major rival is Belhaven University.
History
Prior to 1964
Millsaps fielded its first intercollegiate football team in 1920. From 1920 to 1963 the Majors accumulated a 131–174–30 record over 40 seasons (no team was fielded in 1942, 1943 or 1945).
Between 1920 and 1959 the Majors met their rival Mississippi College Choctaws in 39 games, constituting the historic Backyard Brawl rivalry between the two schools. During that time the Choctaws claimed a 24–9–6 lead in the series, which was discontinued after 1959.
The Harper Davis era (1964–1988) In 1964, Harper Davis took over as the Majors' head coach. A Clarksdale, Mississippi native, Davis had been a four-time All-SEC selection as a defensive back at Mississippi State from 1945 to 1948 who went on to a brief professional career. Davis's tenure at Millsaps got off to an inauspicious start: The Majors finished 0–8 in 1964, followed by losing seasons in two of the next three years. From there, however, Davis elevated the program to one of the most competitive in the South among the small college ranks, with 19 winning seasons between 1968 and 1988.
In 1975, Davis guided the team to its first-ever berth in the Division III playoffs, where the Majors lost to eventual national champion Wittenberg in the semifinal round to finish the year with a 9–2 record. Five years later, in 1980, the Majors completed their first and only undefeated season to date. With Davis at the helm, the team went 9–0, racking up 350 points (38.9/game) while allowing opponents just 31 (3.4/game), recorded five shutouts and won four games by more than 50 points each, including setting the school record for points in a game in an 84–0 drubbing of Landmark Baptist College. The highlight of the season was an 8–7 victory over Central Florida's up-and-coming football program, played before 12,793 fans at the Tangerine Bowl in Orlando. It was Central Florida who returned to Jackson the following season and snapped the Majors 13-game winning streak dating back to the final contest of the 1979 season, 13–6.
Davis retired after the 1988 season, having guided the Majors to a 140–78–4 record (.631) during his 25 year-tenure. All of the Majors' previous coaches had accumulated just 131 victories in 40 seasons.
After Davis (1989–2005) After Davis stepped down, his longtime assistant, Tommy Ranager, was named to lead the football program. The 1989 season marked the first time the Majors played as a conference affiliate and not an independent team, having joined the expanding Collegiate Athletic Conference. In 1991, Ranager's Majors finished the year 7–2, including a 3–1 conference mark that earned Millsaps a share of the first conference championship of the newly restructured and renamed Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference and Ranager conference "Coach of the Year" honors. In 1994, however, Ranager's Majors finished 4–6 (2–2 SCAC), marking the team's first losing season since 1977, and followed that with a 2–7 (0–4 SCAC) campaign in 1995, prompting the program to seek new direction.
Ron Jurney, who succeeded Ranager, guided the Majors to an 8–2 (4–1) finish and a share of the program's second SCAC championship in his first season in 1996, earning him conference "Coach of the Year" honors. The Majors snapped Trinity's streak of 12 consecutive victories by a 13–10 margin in the season finale in Jackson to share the SCAC title with the Tigers. However, Jurney's teams over the next three seasons never won more than three games in a season, accumulating a combined record of 8–22 (2–15 SCAC), resulting in Jurney being relieved of his post after the 1999 campaign.