Last week, the NFL Players Association elected a new executive director, in the final act of a process that was marked more by secrecy than transparency. On Monday, freshly reelected NFLPA president Jalen Reeves-Maybin posted a lengthy article on the union’s website defending the search.
The target audience isn’t immediately clear. The vast majority of players won’t read it. The vast majority of fans won’t read it. It’s ultimately a P.R. strategy aimed at filling the void created by the absence of a press conference following the announcement that JC Tretter has become the new executive director (when Lloyd Howell got the job in 2023, a press conference was held that same day).
There’s been no on-the-record session with Tretter, Reeves-Maybin, or anyone else. And there’s no indication as to when anything like that will happen. (Reporters may have to wait until the NFLPA press conference in the days before the next Super Bowl.)
Based on Reeves-Maybin’s article, the search process can be summarized like this: An outside search firm identified more than 300 candidates, with the list ultimately trimmed to 32. That paring of the potential executive directors continued until the Executive Committee was ready to fulfill its mandate to present 2-4 finalists for consideration by the Board of Player Representatives.
The three finalists were disclosed to the Board of Player Representatives only one day before the union’s annual meetings. Obviously, that’s not nearly enough time for the representatives to consider the candidates and, more importantly, to get meaningful feedback from the players they represent. The rank and file had no real voice in the process.
Of course, there’s no indication the rank and file wanted one. It’s a concrete example of the basic reality that most members of the NFLPA are detached and disinterested as to matters of union leadership. The power resides in the members of the Executive Committee who hand pick the finalists for executive director — and the panel of representatives who decide, based on a very limited chance to process the information and deliberate the merits of the candidates, which of the finalists will be hired for the most important position in the entire union.
Starting with the 2023 search that resulted in the election of Lloyd Howell, the NFLPA pivoted to a top-secret selection methodology that minimized external scrutiny. In the press conference after Howell’s selection, Tretter defended the approach that was devised on his watch as NFLPA president.
Here’s what we wrote at the time: “While past processes have been flawed due to excessive transparency, this one was flawed by the complete absence of it. And one of the biggest victims of the process is the man who got the job, because we’ll never know with any certainty whether Lloyd Howell (whose work experience does little if anything to prepare him for the job) was truly the best option — because no one will know who the other options were.”
The fact that Howell’s tenure became a complete and total disaster did not deter the NFLPA from doing it again. And why? Ostensibly, secrecy protects the candidates from having their current employers learn that they were looking for another job.
But this isn’t some lateral move with a competing firm. It’s the top position — with a seven-figure salary — at a major sports union. What employer would be troubled by an employee reaching for a brass ring? Every competent business should aspire to have employees with big ambitions.
For example, after media reports flagged American Conference Commissioner Tim Pernetti as one of the three finalists for the job that went to Tretter, the powers-that-be didn’t freak out. They were proud.
“Media reports about Commissioner Tim Pernetti and the NFLPA executive director search underscore what we see every day,” American Conference board chair and East Carolina University chancellor Philip Rogers said in a statement. “The American Conference continues to be a deep pool of talented member institutions, athletic directors, coaches, and leadership that the biggest brands in and beyond college athletics work to recruit.”
As to Tretter, his about-face still hasn’t been addressed. How did he go in less than eight months from having “no interest” in the job of NFLPA executive director to accepting it? There’s been no answer. There may never be one.
Instead, the article from Reeves-Maybin devotes a lengthy paragraph to distancing Tretter from the turmoil that culminated in Howell’s resignation, explaining that “two independent outside law firms, found no evidence JC engaged in any of the alleged wrongdoing, was involved in any misconduct by others, or withheld information from players.” The investigations, per Reeves-Maybin, found that Tretter — who served as the union’s chief strategy officer — never had access to the collusion ruling that was inexplicably hidden from players for more than five months, until Pablo Torre uncovered it. That secrecy was blamed not on Howell or Tretter or Reeves-Maybin but on the lawyers.
“As we told the Board of Player Reps back in June,” Reeves-Maybin wrote, “the choice to delay release of the decision was made by the NFLPA’s legal department in consultation with outside counsel to protect member confidentiality and prevent the NFL from attempting to recover legal fees.”
Frankly, that makes no sense. The three members who pursued the grievance — Lamar Jackson, Kyler Murray, and Russell Wilson — had their suspicions confirmed by the arbitrator’s finding that the league office attempted to persuade teams to collude in the refusal to give them fully guaranteed contracts. And the NFL nevertheless tried to pursue legal fees, and lost.
One paragraph in the 43-paragraph article stands out from the others: “On the final day, each candidate participated in mock media engagement, with the Board role-playing as media. The goal was to see how each candidate would respond under scrutiny. Given the public attention to JC’s candidacy, he also laid out a more targeted media approach.”
The “more targeted media approach” has played out, apparently as designed. Say nothing. Issue a long article few will ever read. Move on.
On one hand, if the players don’t care, why should anyone else? On the other hand, it’s critical for a proper balance to be established and maintained between the NFL and the NFLPA. The league already holds the upper hand, because the owners will shut down the sport for a full season if necessary and the players won’t.
The election process for picking the person who’ll be responsible for standing up to the biggest, richest, and most powerful sports league in the country shouldn’t unfold like the installment of a new condo president at Del Boca Vista. The NFLPA needs to find someone who will be ready, willing, and able to fight the NFL at every turn — and to exercise control over lawyers who would give ridiculous advice regarding the strategy for leveraging an unprecedented finding that the league had been caught with both hands pressed against the bottom of the collusion cookie jar.
The NFLPA can try all it wants to treat the relationship with the NFL as a partnership. The NFL will never view it that way. If the NFLPA isn’t willing to constantly challenge, question, and irritate the owners, the NFL will continue to get everything it wants under the guise of giving the players a fair deal.