Gay Culverhouse

Gay Culverhouse, who put aside her career focusing on special education and child psychiatry to join the family business, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers of the N.F.L., and who went on to champion the cause of former professional football players debilitated by dementia and other health issues, died on Wednesday at her home in Fernandina Beach, Fla. She was 73. Dr. Gay Culverhouse is a sought-out expert in the field of concussion and head injury prevention. She has a doctorate in special education from Columbia University, and was on the faculty of the medical school at the University of South Florida. She served as President of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and as President of Notre Dame College of Ohio. Dr. Culverhouse was the highest ranking woman in the National Football League for 10 years. As the president of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, she had an insider’s view of the NFL and the devastating effect of sports-related head injuries on the countless players the league claimed to care about. In 2009, Culverhouse testified before the House Judiciary Committee on the Legal Issues Relating to Football Head Injuries, and offered a blistering assessment of the NFL’s treatment of its former players. With a passion to save brains no matter whom she angers, she subsequently formed the Gay Culverhouse Players’ Outreach Program, Inc., with a mission to help retired NFL players gain access to the benefits they are entitled. Ms. Culverhouse subsequently spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to found and finance the Gay Culverhouse Players’ Outreach Program, now known as Retired Player Assistance. The N.F.L. and its players’ alumni association announced in October 2010 that they would work with Ms. Culverhouse’s organization to expand its efforts. Gay Culverhouse was born on Feb. 5, 1947, in Montgomery, Ala. Her father and her mother, Joy (McCann) Culverhouse, had met while students at the University of Alabama. She resigned as team president in May 1994. Her father died that August, and in 1995 the trustees of his estate, estimated at about $380 million, sold the team to Malcolm Glazer, a Florida businessman, whose family still owns it. Ms. Culverhouse left Florida in 1995 after she was traumatized by the arrest of an ex-convict subsequently convicted of plotting to kidnap either her or her daughter, a student at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Fla., for a $1 million ransom. She was briefly president of Notre Dame College in suburban Cleveland, a women’s school at the time. She also continued working in special education and was a leading competitor on the Paso Fino horse-riding circuit. In addition to her daughter, Leigh Standley, Ms. Culverhouse’s survivors include a son, Chris; a brother, Hugh Jr., a lawyer in Miami; and several grandchildren. Her mother, Joy, died in 2016. Ms. Culverhouse had been married three times but was not married at time of her death.