NFLPA elects Lloyd Howell as its new executive director

The NFL Players Association’s Board of Player Representatives elected Lloyd Howell as the new CEO of the NFLPA.

Howell will take over for DeMaurice Smith, with an official start date “in the coming weeks,” according to a statement from the NFLPA. Smith was re-elected to his fifth term in office in 2021, which he said at the time would be his final term. Howell became the NFLPA’s fourth executive director, after Ed Garvey (1971-1983), Gene Upshaw (1983-2008) and Smith (2009-present).

“We are excited for Lloyd to lead our association into the next chapter and succeed DeMaurice Smith, who has ably led our organization over the past decade-plus and has our gratitude and thanks,” NFLPA President JC Tretter said in a statement. “It was important to us to run an operation 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 that Lloyd will deliver impressive achievements on behalf of our members.” .

The research, which began over a year ago, was conducted by an 11-member NFLPA search committee made up of union executives, including Tretter and vice presidents Calais Campbell, Austin Ekeler and Richard Sherman.

“Leadership is important and player leadership is important, and I think that’s something we want to build on and we see it as a giant step forward and a model for the future of what our union can do and how important it really is to have strong player leadership,” said Tritter, who retired from the NFL in August while remaining in The position of president of the NFL.

The process, which began in March 2022, has been largely secretive after Tretter and executives recommended a new amendment to union search regulations in July, which called for names of candidates to be withheld from the board until the group met to vote on the executive. Director position. The Board of Directors passed the amendment unanimously, allowing Tretter and the Executive Committee to secretly screen potential candidates over several months before final candidates were selected to be voted on by the Board.

Tretter—who could not remember when the committee first met with Howell, citing a large number of interviews—refused to disclose the final number of nominees. He said the committee put between two and four before the council for a vote, as stipulated constitutionally.

The players’ representatives learned of the identity of the candidates this week, Tritter confirmed, and the vote took place on Wednesday morning, with the participation of 30 of the 32 teams. To be elected, a candidate must receive a majority of votes cast by secret ballot and recorded by a third party accounting firm.

While Tretter estimated that 48 of the 128 potential representatives and alternates attended the vote, only 47 were depicted in a photo Tretter released with Howell after the election.

“We’re not going to have a vote until the House is unanimously ready to vote, and we waited until that time today — this morning — we told the House ‘We’re ready to vote unanimously,'” Tritter said. They said we are ready. We went to vote.”

In a briefing with the NFL media Wednesday, Terter defended the search and election process and downplayed concerns about prioritizing confidentiality over transparency, calling it “good governance.”

“We talked about wanting to spread a wide network, the way you can get very talented people involved in a process if they believe in the process, and how it will be managed,” Tritter said. “…we did a lot of research on what (the previous elections looked like in) 2009 and 2015. I think in 2009 we had newspapers endorsing the candidates. … And that’s not for the media to decide, that’s for the player to make the decision as Our constitution defines. So, the way the board looks at good governance was (the executive committee’s) job to qualify the candidates, bring them to us, and then let us decide what’s best for the players. Again, we did that.”

Players such as Pittsburgh Steelers’ quarterback Cam Hayward praised the process.

“NFLPA EC and President @JCTretter have done an amazing job maintaining confidentiality, professionalism, and finding someone who will lead our great league forward!” Hayward tweeted.

Howell retired in December from Booz Allen Hamilton, where he worked for more than 34 years and was chief financial officer at the time of his retirement. He is also a member of the University of Pennsylvania Board of Trustees. He holds a BA from the University of Pennsylvania in Electrical Engineering and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

“My only job will be to defend, push, lead and push what’s best for the players,” Howell said on Wednesday. “It’s been hours since the decision was made, but I intend to really connect with the players, understand their priorities, and set an agenda that I will drive and lead with the team.”