Athletics
The school's sports teams are known as the Majors, and their colors are purple and white. They participate in the NCAA's Division III and the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference.
Men's sports include: baseball, basketball, cheerleading, cross country, football, golf, soccer, tennis, and track and field. Women's sports include basketball, cheerleading, cross country, dance team, golf, soccer, softball, tennis, track and field, and volleyball. Both men and women will begin lacrosse teams in 2010.
The Majors had a fierce football and basketball rivalry with Mississippi College in nearby Clinton through the 1950s before competition was suspended after an infamous student brawl at a basketball game. Campus legend says the brawl was sparked by the alleged theft of the body of Millsaps founder Major Millsaps by Mississippi College students. The rivalry was considered by many as the best in Mississippi, featuring a prank by Mississippi College students who painted "TO HELL WITH MILSAPS" (sic) on the Millsaps Observatory. The football rivalry resumed in 2000 as the "Backyard Brawl", with games at Mississippi Veterans Memorial Stadium. The rivalry took a one-year hiatus in 2005 but resumed in 2006.
Millsaps was the summer training camp home for the NFL's New Orleans Saints in 2006, 2007, and 2008.
Millsaps was also home to the famous game-ending play in the 2007 Trinity vs. Millsaps football game, in which Trinity University defeated Millsaps by a score of 28-24 after the miraculous play that later won the Pontiac Game-Changing Performance of the Year award, which had never before been bestowed upon a play outside of the NCAA's Bowl Subdivision.
In 2008, Millsaps quarterback Juan Joseph was awarded the Conerly Trophy, which goes to the best football player in the state of Mississippi.
Read more about this topic: Millsaps College