Conflict of interest now clouds tenure of NFLPA chief Lloyd Howell, who faces what should be an easy decision

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Nearly four years ago, in October 2021, representatives for the NFL Players Association cast just enough votes for DeMaurice Smith to avoid an open election, making him a lame-duck executive director.

It became clear after that vote — and really, in the months preceding it — that a new leader of the NFLPA would shepherd the players and negotiate the next collective bargaining agreement that would eventually pour billions more into their pockets.

That person would be Lloyd Howell. Selected in an unusually private process by a small group of players in the summer of 2023, he is now entering the third year of a five-year term. For the first time in his short tenure, there are legitimate questions about whether Howell will remain that person.

An apparent signer of a confidentiality agreement with the NFL that effectively hid details of the league’s efforts to lessen guaranteed money available to players, Howell faces a potentially worse epithet. On Tuesday morning, ESPN revealed information that had been publicly available for some time: Howell, the leader of a labor group, is a paid consultant for a private equity firm approved to buy into the NFL, otherwise known as the management.

That perception of conflict now dogs Howell, who has neither built up enough capital with players nor media to earn the benefit of the doubt, brushing these issues aside. That leaves two decisions to make, the first of which belongs to Howell.

Will he resign as a paid consultant for The Carlyle Group? While there are no allegations of wrongdoing and the NFLPA had been aware of his work with the group before electing him as leader, the conflict of interest may be too much to overcome. Since Carlyle was approved to buy into NFL teams — and especially since everyone now knows about Howell’s ties to the group — is staying on as a consultant worth it?

The second decision belongs to the players, and it should flow from how Howell answers the first. Is this the leadership the players need, want or deserve?

Howell’s decision should be easy. Removing even the perception of conflict is as simple a call as a quarterback completing a checkdown.

The players’ decision may be tougher.

The entire process used to select Howell was intentionally secretive, according to then-NFLPA president JC Tretter, now the union’s chief strategy officer. Tretter once wrote that he wanted a “keen commitment to confidentiality” for a process that would be “on par with Fortune 100 companies.” About a dozen players comprise the union’s executive committee, and they (with help from a search firm) narrowed the field of finalists down to a group that is still not publicly verified. When white smoke emerged in June 2023, it was Howell who took the labor scepter.

Howell was thoroughly vetted for the role. The former CFO of renowned consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, he had decades of experience in finance but none in sports and little in terms of labor management. Some around the league believed the union would target a leader with a football background, especially after Smith, a lawyer, had fallen out of favor, and his predecessor, the late Gene Upshaw, saw his legend grow with each passing year.

Howell’s selection instead signaled that the union was prioritizing money, ensuring membership would earn the largest slice of pie possible the next time it went up against NFL owners. Team valuations were rising at record rates. More than seven years of labor-peace runway had existed, allowing everyone to get their affairs in order ahead of the next collective bargaining battle.

Howell had interests outside of football labor. Per ESPN, he serves on three different boards and works for Carlyle as an “operating executive,” their corporate term for a paid consultant. That clearly wasn’t a problem for the union in 2023 as the NFLPA believed Howell could walk and chew gum at the same time.

Just one of these board positions pays nearly three times the salary of an NFL practice squad player. These three board seats combined likely pay at or above the minimum salary for an NFL veteran.

Far greater an issue than the boards on which he serves — would anyone really have an issue if Howell was on a board to help inner-city youth? — is his consulting work with Carlyle.

In 2023, Carlyle was just a plucky private equity firm trying to make its way managing $381 billion in assets. A year later, the NFL approved the group as one of a select few that could buy up to 10% of a team. Around that time, someone at the union mentioned to Howell that he should think about whether to continue with Carlyle, and it was around then that he determined it was indeed worth it.

It was not.

As soon as Carlyle gained the potential to become intertwined with the NFL, the head of the players’ union should have found the door. Howell opened himself up to numerous potential conflicts with Carlyle itself and — more importantly for the more than 2,000 NFL players he represents — with the union.

“It could hurt the union depending on what side of the fence he was on — was he more loyal to the private equity firm or the union?” posited one team source. “Maybe he learns something in that situation and doesn’t think it’s a big deal, doesn’t say anything and it comes out later.”

Another team source pointed to financial interest and transparency as more significant conflicts: “He could theoretically have access to league information that the union might not have.”

“The conflict would be that he has a duty to do what is the best interest of the players as the union head but may also be working for [NFL] ownership if the private equity fund he still works for buys an ownership stake in a team,” said a third team source.

To date, there have been no allegations of any wrongdoing, and Carlyle has yet to buy into an NFL team.

Perhaps the greater conflict exists for the firm than it does the union. The head of the labor union potentially gaining inside information that he can take back to the players to use against the league in negotiations … why would the NFL want that?

No matter how much Howell is getting paid from Carlyle, it surely isn’t more than the $3 million-plus he’s pulling in to lead NFL players. The (likely) six-figure sum from this consulting work is worth neither the headlines nor the questions Howell is facing today.

Howell can resign his post as a paid consultant of Carlyle at any point and issue a statement that could serve as a torniquet. Consider something like this: Though I have done nothing that harms the players in any way, I am resigning from my role as a paid consultant for this group effective immediately. My involvement has become a distraction, and my priorities lie with the union. My only goal is securing the best future for these players, and even the mere perception of a potential conflict must be eliminated as I continue to work tirelessly for these great men.

There is no admission of wrongdoing, and he would be showing swift and decisive action that centers the players he works for over his own monetary interests. There is no need to wait any further.

With no big-money deals to negotiate in the past two years, Howell does not yet have a feather in his cap. He’s overseen the continued success of the NFLPA survey that has forced team owners to spend more money where they previously cut corners — facilities, dining options and travel, among those areas — but it’s arguable he’s dealt with more bad headlines than good.

• A month after getting the union seat, Howell’s former employer settled a $377 million whistleblower case with the Department of Justice where he was named in the filings.
• Howell spent the first year of his leadership getting a lay of the land in the NFL. He did virtually zero press as he met with all 32 teams, player leadership and team owners. “A yearlong listening tour,” one longtime agent derided. (In fairness, perhaps a necessary one for an outsider.)
• Ahead of the start of the 2024 season, in a rare interview with the Washington Post, Howell seemed to accept the concept of an eventual 18th game being added to the season. He took a much stauncher approach to the idea at his Super Bowl press conference seven months later.
• The union’s total workforce shrunk by nearly a quarter after Howell offered buyouts to the staff earlier this year, according to Sports Business Journal.
• There’s an ongoing FBI investigation into OneTeam, a licensing group founded by the NFL and MLB players unions that predate Howell’s involvement with the NFLPA.
• There’s the confidentiality agreement from earlier this year relating to an arbitrator’s decision that ruled against the NFLPA in its collusion grievance.

It took more than two years for an arbitrator to find that, while there was evidence the NFL directed team owners to reduce guaranteed money in player contracts, there was not enough evidence that collusion occurred, as interpreted by the CBA. Though the union told players about the arbitrator’s decision, the 61-page report was kept under wraps as Howell signed to a confidentiality agreement.

It’s obvious why the NFL would want to keep its dirty laundry private, even if it won the case. But the union? It should want players and agents to know exactly how the league was operating. Instead … silence.

A source familiar with the agreement told CBS Sports one of the factors in the union agreeing to confidentiality was the collective interests of the three quarterbacks — Lamar Jackson, Kyler Murray and Russell Wilson — who received most of the focus in the grievance. A different source, who views Howell’s two years with the NFLPA more positively than others with whom CBS Sports spoke, supported that theory.

“There seems to be a little bit of a witch hunt for Lloyd,” said that source. “He pretty clearly has held player interests first during his short tenure and done some good things on the economic front. I understand wanting to know why the arbitration ruling was held tight, but there are obviously some things that went on in the proceedings that don’t reflect well on the player community as they talk about their own.”

The union has since executed its right to an appeal, but that only came months following the arbitrator’s decision after the findings had been leaked. The half-year between decision and appeal makes Howell look even worse.

The NFLPA faces massive decisions that likely need be determined ahead of the CBA’s expiration in March 2031 expiration. The NFL has a seemingly insatiable appetite for international expansion that will continue to stress players’ bodies. There could be a new media rights deal between the league and its broadcast partners, one in which the union would surely want to negotiate a larger piece. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell recently stated the league will seek to reconfigure salary-cap math, essentially saying the owners feel players are getting more money than their agreed-upon share.

And the league has quietly been working on how to implement an 18th regular-season game. The extra game would be significant to everyone’s bottom line, and the union must have a leader in whom it trusts to negotiate.

“You can’t make any decisions right now with him,” one player agent said.

It is noisy right now, but it is not deafening. The lack of media pressure around the story can be explained away simply by its complexity. If it was deemed of interest to the NFL fan at large, there would be attempts to dumb this story down into a 1-minute TikTok.

It does not appear the players are going to be quick to 86 Howell, no matter how expediently an online petition form can be readied. To throw out the baby and bathwater just four years after moving on from Smith would functionally put the players back to square one with the real treasure — millions of dollars — being burned along the way.

In a way, Howell is a victim of the calendar. Veteran journalist Pablo Torre got his hands on a secret collusion decision in late June, and the latest ESPN reporting landed before any NFL player has reported to training camp in early July — the lone, brief portion of the year where the focus is not firmly on the NFL. Palace intrigue with sports’ largest labor union will have to do.

What happens next is up to Howell, who now faces the biggest test of his early tenure.

“The game belongs to the players,” said one source. “How will you unite and rally the players?”

Before Howell can negotiate against the owners and for the players, he must negotiate himself. Is he a finance guy who happens to lead a union or a union leader with no financial conflicts?

This news was originally published on this post .

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