CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
Menu
Research dossier · People & Ideas

Mark May

American football player

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 4, 2026
Entity authorityQ6768767
Source-derived summary

Mark Eric May (born November 2, 1959) is an American former professional football player who was a guard for 13 seasons in the National Football League (NFL) during the 1980s and 1990s. May played college football for the Pittsburgh Panthers and earned unanimous All-American honors. He was selected in the first round of the 1981 NFL draft, and played professionally for the Washington Redskins, San Diego Chargers, and Arizona Cardinals.

May became involved in broadcasting following his retirement from the NFL in 1993. Most notably, he was employed by ESPN between 2001 and 2017.

Early life and college

At Oneonta High School in Oneonta, New York, May earned eight varsity letters in football, basketball, and track. He was inducted into the school's Athletic Hall of Fame in October 2007.

May attended the University of Pittsburgh, where he played for the Pittsburgh Panthers football team from 1977 to 1980. As a senior in 1980, he was a unanimous first-team All-American and received the Outland Trophy as the nation's top collegiate interior lineman. As a part of the 1980 Pittsburgh Panthers football team, he played with future NFL players Dan Marino, Dwight Collins, Rickey Jackson, Russ Grimm, Jimbo Covert, Bill Maas, Hugh Green, and Tim Lewis.

Editorial summary

“Mark May” enters the record as american football player. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Mark, American and football can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA useful biographical orientation record, particularly for establishing names, roles and a first chronology. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1959, 1981, 1993, 2001—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1959-11-02. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Mark, American and football.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Mark May” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Mark, American and football provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6768767. VIAF identifies the subject as 40768070. The Library of Congress control number is n84022476. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1959, 1981, 1993 and 2001.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Mark May”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Mark May primary sources, Mark May archive and Mark research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Mark May”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Mark May” 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.