NFLPA exec director Lloyd Howell Jr. steps down amid controversy

18-07-2025

July 18 - Lloyd Howell Jr. stepped down as executive director of the NFL Players Association on Thursday night following weeks of scrutiny for multiple blunders, including a reported conflict of interest and a decision to hide key parts of an arbitration ruling from the players.
"It's clear that my leadership has become a distraction to the important work the NFLPA advances every day," Howell said in a statement. "For this reason, I have informed the NFLPA Executive Committee that I am stepping down as Executive Director of the NFLPA and Chairman of the Board of NFL Players effective immediately. I hope this will allow the NFLPA to maintain its focus on its player members ahead of the upcoming season.
"I am proud of what we have been able to accomplish at the NFLPA over the past two years. I will be rooting for the players from the sidelines as loud as ever, and I know the NFLPA will continue to ensure that players remain firmly at the center of football's future."
Last week, ESPN reported that Howell held a part-time role as a consultant for The Carlyle Group, one of a small handful of private equity firms that the NFL has approved to pursue minority ownership in franchises.
ESPN's reporting included a former lead outside counsel for the NFLPA, Jim Quinn, calling it "an outrageous conflict for the head of a labor union to have an interest in a third party that is aligned with the NFL."
It was not the first blow to Howell's reputation this offseason. In June, the "Pablo Torre Finds Out" podcast published an arbitrator's report from January, when the NFLPA and the league were at odds over potential collusion by team owners to tamp down the growth of quarterback contracts.
The arbitrator, Christopher Droney, ruled that there wasn't sufficient evidence of collusion between owners -- but he went on to say that "by a clear preponderance of the evidence," commissioner Roger Goodell and the NFL's general counsel encouraged owners to restrict guaranteed money in player contracts.
Howell and the union reportedly had a confidentiality agreement with the NFL to keep the full report from getting out. Howell briefed the players but didn't provide them copies of the report, according to ESPN.
Furthermore, Howell sits on the board of OneTeam Partners, a group licensing firm that is under investigation by the FBI.
--Field Level Media

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Siraj carry sums up Test series of great moments to live long in the memory

The Guardian

a few seconds ago

The Guardian

Siraj carry sums up Test series of great moments to live long in the memory

The 1990 football World Cup was not, in truth, a great tournament, but it was a tournament of great moments, and in time they became all that was remembered. An often dreary event to live through – no World Cup has had an average fewer goals per match – it was rescued by the most remarkable of all curtain-raisers, Benjamin Massing's assault on Claudio Caniggia, Roger Milla's dancing, René Higuita's goalkeeping, Lothar Matthäus's wonder goal, David Platt's volley, Frank Rijkaard and Rudi Völler, Gazza's tears. In the end, these moments are all that get remembered. It has gone down as a classic. This series has gone through the same process in fast forward. Marked more than anything by players bravely hauling themselves beyond the brink of exhaustion on flat wickets, it has simply produced too many great moments to not in fact be great. Already the longueurs have fallen from the memory, leaving only legends: Rishabh Pant's acrobatics; the Headingley run chase; Shubman Gill's 269 and Akash Deep's 10 wickets; Jofra Archer striking with his third ball back in Test cricket; time-wasting, fury, 'the spirit of the game'; Shoaib Bashir winning a Test with a freak wicket taken while bowling with a multiply fractured finger; Pant limping out to bat at Old Trafford; a cameo from future pub quiz question Anshul Kamboj; Ben Stokes bowling his way out of the series with a barely functional right arm; India refusing to fold, or to accept the draw; four Tests (so far) going to the last session of the last day; the Oval groundkeeper Lee Fortis; Deep becoming England's nightmare watchman; the dizzying narrative twists across the fourth day here. Thanks to a brief, heavy and deeply inconvenient shower this game, like all the rest, has gone to a fifth day, having seemed set to become the second of the series to end with India coming to terms with unexpected defeat. The words of Washington Sundar with one day of the third Test remaining still linger: 'Winning a Test at Lord's is going to be amazing. We're sitting pretty.' A few weeks later and a few miles away, on Saturday night at the Oval it was Yashasvi Jaiswal who summed up his team's thinking: 'We are really confident. We just need to keep bowling in the right areas.' Jaiswal, more than anyone, had every reason to think fate was on India's side this time. He had been on 40, towards the end of the third day, when he sent the ball steepling straight to the fielder at deep fine leg – Liam Dawson, on the field because of Chris Woakes's shoulder injury – who simply had no idea what was going on. Dawson sensed people turning in his direction, deduced he was about to be involved in something, needed only to work out what it was. And then, in the most literal sense, it hit him. India led by 32 as the ball bounced off Dawson and on to the ground, and when Jaiswal was eventually dismissed deep into the following day he had stretched that to precisely 250. It seemed then that a moment of calamitous deep fielding would decide the game, and as the end came into view it still did. The only question was which one. Mohammed Siraj has had a phenomenal series. No amount of praise could be too much. Nobody has bowled as many overs, taken as many wickets, given so much of themselves. Only slips and wicketkeepers have taken more catches. It was Siraj who Bashir dismissed to end the Lord's Test, after he had faced 30 deliveries for four gutsy, stubborn, determined runs. Even his body language, his wonderful ability to physically express the situation in which he finds himself, is unrivalled. He has been magnetic, magnificent, an outsider who is simply unprepared to be anything but integral. And just as it seemed to have swung closed it was Siraj who thrust open the door for England to win the series. Sign up to The Spin Subscribe to our cricket newsletter for our writers' thoughts on the biggest stories and a review of the week's action after newsletter promotion Harry Brook was on 19, and England still 237 runs from their target, when he attacked a short delivery from Prasidh Krishna. It was an ugly shot, leaden-footed, top-edged towards deep backward square leg where Siraj stood. He set himself for the catch, waited, watched, and safely collected the ball. Prasidh spread his arms in celebration; KL Rahul sprinted from the slips to congratulate the bowler; Siraj took a step back, on to the boundary padding. Instead of raising a finger, the umpire raised both arms. When Brook was finally dismissed – caught, inevitably, by Siraj, which even then felt more like cruelty than redemption – England needed only 73. In the final analysis Siraj seemed destined to have had a phenomenal, brilliant, inspiring, humiliating failure of a series. In the end, these moments are all that are remembered – but still there is time for a couple more.