Earsell Mackbee
American football player (1941-2009)

Earsell Mackbee (January 15, 1941 – November 9, 2009) was an American professional football player.
Mackbee was born in Brookhaven, Mississippi and served as an airman in the United States Air Force. He graduated from Utah State University, where he starred as a cornerback. He played five seasons in the National Football League, all with the Minnesota Vikings. Mackbee was a starting cornerback on the Vikings’ Purple People Eaters defense and made 15 interceptions in his career. He started in Super Bowl IV but was injured while unsuccessfully attempting a tackle on a play that resulted in Otis Taylor running down the sidelines for a 46-yard touchdown to close out the scoring with 82 seconds remaining in the third quarter. Mackbee explained, “He had used a hitch and go earlier. This was just a hitch. I had gone up tight on him a lot. Earlier I had a pinched nerve in my shoulder and as I hit him my shoulder went numb and I lost him.”
After retiring from the NFL in 1970, Mackbee became an entrepreneur, opening a chain of restaurants and other business ventures.
The public source identifies “Earsell Mackbee” as american football player (1941-2009). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Earsell, Mackbee and American.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5326980. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1941, 2009 and 1970.
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This entry incorporates text from “Earsell Mackbee” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.