Very rarely does the public at large get a look at the inner workings of professional sports leagues and their labor negotiations. Thanks to an initial report by Pablo Torre on his podcast Pablo Torre Finds Out, detailing the cover-up of an arbitration case that showed potential evidence of collusion from NFL owners against guaranteed player salaries, a surge in reporting surrounding the NFLPA has shown just how stained the top of the union appears to be. It’s very clear that a union in this state can’t function in the best interests of its players, but the conflicts of interests at the top of the union are really breathtaking.
The crux of the recent reporting has been centered around Lloyd Howell, who was silently elected as the executive director of the NFLPA in June of 2023. Howell has the daunting challenge of uniting and representing the players as they negotiate against the owners for years to come in regards to collective bargaining agreements. But ESPN unearthed the rather startling fact that Howell has a second job: working as a consultant for Carlyle Group, a private equity firm that’s been approved by the league to seek minority ownership in NFL teams.
Essentially, the executive director of the NFLPA has a second job that involves investing in ownership stakes of NFL teams. No need to mince words here: That’s just an insane conflict of interest that’s easy to see — and the way the top of the union has been behaving over the past few years, in conflation with the Howell election, only accentuates concerns constituents and outside viewers have about the union.
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It’s important to remember what J.C. Tretter, the president of the NFLPA from 2020-2024, said when Howell was elected:
“We are excited to have Lloyd lead our union into its next chapter and succeed DeMaurice Smith, who has ably led our organization for the past decade plus and has our gratitude and thanks. It was important for us to run a process that lived up to the prestige of the position we sought to fill. The process was 100% player led and focused on leadership competency, skills and experience. Our union deserves strong leadership and a smooth transition, and we are confident Lloyd will make impactful advances on behalf of our membership.”
Tretter noting that the process was crucial to Howell’s selection is interesting, because it’s widely known by now that Howell was chosen by a select group of 11 players, and that many players did not even have a chance to vote on the rushed process. There were even concerns over whether or not Howell’s election process was constitutional by the union’s standards in regards to how much time player representatives were given to vote after receiving the names.
Tretter did eventually put out a statement saying that the NFLPA complied with their constitution and followed the correct voting process. But the shroud of confusion over the process was an alarming instance of seemingly unnecessary levels of secrecy — which became a theme that boiled over into the mess the union has today.
ESPN also reported that the NFLPA and NFL owners agreed to keep the results of their arbitration regarding collusion against player salaries confidential. Even from the players themselves. While the ruling went in the NFL’s favor because there wasn’t “a clear preponderance” of evidence that teams actually colluded, arbitrator Christopher Droney also said that there was “little question” the NFL encouraged teams to reduce guarantees in veterans’ contracts following the Browns’ historic deal for Deshaun Watson in 2022. Withholding that from the players themselves, a few of whom were actively seeking out new deals, is antithesis to the normal functions of a union.
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The selection of Howell, the sealing of the arbitration results, being unfazed by Howell’s part-time job with the Carlyle Group — none of these are the actions of a healthy union with the players’ interests at the core of its cause. After all the reporting over the past couple weeks, Howell just recently decided to appeal the ruling, according to ESPN. It took an exposé that showed how dysfunctional this union really is for them to take the basic steps of protecting the player group.
It will be fascinating to see where the union goes from here. The NFLPA is not backing down from their support of Howell, and Howell will not resign from the Carlyle Group. There are still a couple years before CBA negotiations will get intense going into 2030, but the way things are right now it’s just hard to believe that they’ll actually be organized enough to stand tall against ownership, assuming that’s even their goal. If they can’t even represent the highest-paid players in the league with fervor, what is going to happen to everyone else down the food chain when money issues are tightly contested with ownership?
No one is ever going to say that running the NFLPA is easy, but the reporting that’s been laid out shows an institution that needs to make a heftier effort toward effective representation. A strong union is imperative for the health of the league because there is no NFL without the players that populate it. It’s impossible to have a combative, strong backbone for a group like this with the level of secrecy and working in the shadows going on. That’s something that’s important for everyone who loves the functionality of this league to remember — from fans to journalists and the union itself.
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