By John Genzale/SportsBusinessJournal
Sylvia’s Mackey story:
Sylvia Mackey raised hell about football-related dementia on CNN and ESPN after her husband, Hall of Fame tight end John Mackey, started to lose his God-given faculties. He became forgetful, often angry and had started causing public scenes. “He wasn’t the John I knew and loved for so many years.”
The Mackey case has been well documented not only on television but in countless print articles.
Sylvia, an articulate actress, model and flight attendant, a member of United Airlines’ flight-attendant union and a member of the Screen Actor’s Guild for 34 years, expected the league or the union to help. “John still pays his union dues every year.” But the union was largely unresponsive and help was slow until other former players came to the aid of the Mackeys by putting pressure on the union.
“It wasn’t only my husband,” she said. “There were lots of guys with some form of dementia from football, all facing medical catastrophe. Finances, even lives were going down the drain.”
Sylvia confronted Paul Tagliabue before he retired. It’s an over-simplification to say that the problem was instantly recognized and solved, but according Syliva, “that got the ball rolling.” Tagliabue passed along his concerns to Roger Goodell and early in 2007, Plan 88, the number John wore when playing for the Baltimore Colts, was approved by the league and written into the labor agreement with the NFLPA.
Full article from SportsBusiness Journal
