New union head selected in secrecy
The NFL Players Association announced Lloyd Howell as its executive director on Wednesday, selecting their new leader in total secrecy. Not only did the NFLPA keep the media and the public in the dark as to the candidates for the job and selection process, but almost all players had no idea what was going on, too.
The lack of transparency was by design, NFLPA president JC Tretter said. He said the union was so dismayed by the process in 2009 and 2015 that led to the selection and reelection of DeMaurice Smith that the union changed its bylaws in July 2022 to eliminate transparency requirements.
The new bylaws, voted upon by the team representatives, allowed the NFLPA executive committee, which includes 11 current and former players, including Jason McCourty, to run the search in total confidentiality. The executive committee hired a search firm, interviewed and vetted candidates, and narrowed the search to 2-4 finalists without informing anyone outside of the committee.
By design, the reps (four per team) only found out this past week the identity of the finalists, and without much time to research the candidates, they voted for Howell, a former executive at consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton with little NFL experience. Meanwhile, the other 2,700 players were shut out of the process.
Tretter wouldn’t reveal Wednesday the other finalists. And he defended the lack of transparency, saying it was done out of “good governance,” whatever that means.
“The board unanimously said we want to keep it confidential,” said Tretter, a former nine-year offensive lineman with the Packers and Browns who last played in 2021. “There’s no reason that anybody should need opinions from the media. We talked about how previous processes ran in 2009 and 2015, which we felt were below standards for what players were expecting.”
It’s their union, and they can run it how they want, but it seems that Tretter and NFLPA leadership simply wanted the latitude to pick their next executive director with as little outside interference as possible. Yes, from the media, a convenient boogeyman, but also from the thousands of players who surely have opinions but were frozen out.
Howell offered no specifics on what his goals are, though he works for the players — not the other way around). When asked what part of his business experience led him to the job, Howell cited, “my ability to bring teams together — building a consensus, galvanizing, motivating, keeping the team informed about progress. I have a talent doing that, and I think that’s what resonated with the board.”
Howell is fortunate that he joins on now, eight years before the collective bargaining agreement expires in 2031. He has plenty of time to learn the NFL and develop a negotiating strategy, and in the meantime just has to steer the ship and put out small fires.
Smith, on the other hand, was elected in 2009, just a year and a half before the CBA negotiation. Smith and the union got creamed in that CBA, giving away concessions such as the rookie wage scale that cost the players an incalculable amount of money and leverage over the past decade.