Ex-NFLPA head Lloyd Howell reportedly resigned after charging union for strip club visits totaling over $3,000
Howell allegedly charged the union $738.82 on one receipt and another $2,426 during a separate strip club visit.
The first receipt stems from an alleged visit to a strip club in Miami Gardens. On Nov. 2, 2023, Howell was reportedly picked up at the Fort Lauderdale International Airport at 10:26 p.m. He allegedly had that car drive him to an address in Miami Gardens, which turned out to be a strip club named Tootsie's Cabaret. Around 6:00 a.m. the following morning, that car allegedly drove Howell to his condo in Sunny Isles Beach.
Howell reportedly submitted an expense totaling $738.82 to the union. One of the union's finance workers was curious about the cost of the ride, looked up the Miami Gardens address and discovered it was a strip club, per ESPN.
That employee sent the request up the chain for review. The head of travel for the union reportedly forwarded the receipt and documents to union lawyers to review the situation, sources told ESPN.
Howell allegedly submitted a similar expense over a year later. He reportedly charged the union $2,426 after taking two employees to Magic City strip club in Atlanta. The purpose of the outing was reportedly listed as "Player Engagement Event to support & grow our Union" on the receipt.
Howell reportedly encouraged one of the employees who attended the strip club to also submit an expense report. That employee filed for $736.
Bob Stropp, a veteran labor lawyer, spoke to ESPN about the 2023 incident. Stropp called Howell's actions "horrible," among other things.
"That's pretty horrible," said Stropp, 77, the former general counsel of the United Mine Workers of America. "That's unbelievable. I don't know how you get around that. It's hard to believe that anyone would be that stupid."
It's not the first time Howell has allegedly come under fire due to a strip club expense report. In 2015, Howell and another employee at Booz Allen, where Howell worked at the time, reportedly racked up thousands of dollars in expenses during a visit to a strip club. The employee attempted to submit an expense report for that visit. That employee was fired and Howell was reportedly reprimanded. The incident reportedly occurred while Howell was a defendant in a sexual discrimination lawsuit filed by a Booz Allen partner.
Details of that lawsuit came to light in an ESPN report Thursday. It was unclear whether NFLPA members knew about Howell's involvement in the sexual discrimination lawsuit when he was elected to be the next NFLPA executive director.
Booz Allen eventually settled that lawsuit for an undisclosed sum, per ESPN.
ESPN's report Thursday marked the fourth time this offseason Howell's actions as NFLPA executive director came under scrutiny. Journalists Mike Florio and Pablo Torre previously unearthed two grievance rulings the NFL and NFLPA worked to keep secret. One of those rulings found evidence of collusion among teams, a potentially explosive revelation that Howell not only worked to keep out of the public, but also may have tried to keep from players.
After the first grievance filing came to light, Howell's consulting work with The Carlyle Group also received attention. Howell began working with the company, which is an NFL-approved private equity firm seeking minority ownership in NFL franchises, prior to being elected by the NFLPA. Given the Carlyle Group's ties to the league, Howell's consulting role was seen by some as a conflict of interest. Howell was reportedly asked to resign from his position with The Carlyle Group before taking over as NFLPA executive director, but declined to do so.
Despite the sexual discrimination lawsuit and his consulting work, Howell emerged as a finalist to take over for DeMaurice Smith as the NFLPA executive director. Howell was elected into that role in 2024 after a vote by the 32 player reps.
In his position as NFLPA executive director, Howell made $3.6 million last year.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
22 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Rays acquire Tristan Gray from White Sox, designate Coco Montes for assignment
TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — The Tampa Bay Rays acquired minor league infielder Tristan Gray from the Chicago White Sox for cash and designated utilityman Coco Montes for assignment on Saturday. Gray, 29, was batting .270 with a .333 on-base percentage, nine homers and 44 RBIs in 72 games with Triple-A Charlotte. Gray appeared in two games for the Rays in 2023, and he played 24 games for Oakland and seven for Miami in 2024. He has batted .152 with a .222 on-base percentage and a homer in 17 career major league games. Montes, 28, had hit .200 with one RBI in five games with Tampa Bay this season. He also has batted .221 with a .272 on-base percentage, six homers, 26 RBIs and seven steals in 68 games with Triple-A Durham. ___ AP MLB: The Associated Press
Yahoo
22 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Can Shedeur Sanders win the quarterback battle in Cleveland?
Yahoo Sports fantasy analyst Matt Harmon and NFL writer Charles McDonald discuss the Cleveland Browns quarterback battle and why they feel like Shedeur Sanders is getting too much hype. Hear the full conversation on 'Football 301' - and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you listen. View more Video Transcript How can the Browns actually have a quarterback competition and get a look at all these guys, or is the answer just that they're not? They're not, they're just not. OK, maybe, maybe preseason games, that's probably going to be the most amount of reps that someone like Shado Sanders sees, and look, man, I mean, OK, did you see, did you see the new brown uniforms today? Yeah, those. Am I tripping, or was that black? Like, that didn't look brown to me. OK, it's not just that it's an all-brown uniform. They're sponsored by Dude Wipes. Like, come on, like, and that's what the Browns are serving to us with this quarterback competition. I have truly, truly been baffled at the amount of care that has gone into a 5th round rookie quarterback. Can we just deal with reality for a second? The reality of the situation: Shadoor Sanders, he's probably going to be out of a job by December, and I don't mean off the Browns roster. I mean eliminated from having the chance to be the long-term starting quarterback. Am I really supposed to get excited and hyped up about a 5th round quarterback who's on a rebuilding team that we know isn't good, that's rebuilding the offensive line, that's got 2 first-round picks for next year. I don't understand the fervor outside of just like Deion Sanders' worship, which he's not playing. It's not that interesting. Like, he's not a part of this anymore. It's just a 5th round rookie quarterback truly fighting for his NFL career and that's just not something that ever sticks in the NFL for teams that are trying to rebuild. They're just going to draft like Lenore Sellers or maybe Arch Manning next year. And that sucks to hear, but we have to stop talking about this as if it's a real thing because it's not. He's a 5th quarterback on a really bad team and he's not going to get a whole lot of practice reps because all the other quarterbacks that they invest more in are also new. If he was a 1st round pick, or even a 2nd round pick, I'll give it to you. I'm talking about a 5th round rookie quarterback who wasn't even the first quarterback that his team drafted in the goddamn draft. Stop, stop. Close
Yahoo
22 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Marine veteran's brain returned by funeral home in an unmarked and leaking box, lawsuit claims
A couple is suing two funeral homes after their veteran son's brain was returned in an unmarked cardboard box that was leaking 'biohazardous liquid,' a lawsuit alleges. Lawrence and Abbey Butler are suing Nix & Nix Funeral Homes in Pennsylvania and Southern Cremations & Funeral in Georgia for the 'mishandling' of the remains of their son Timothy Garlington, a Marine veteran who died in November 2023. He died in Georgia, but was originally from Pennsylvania. In November, the couple hired Southern Cremations & Funerals to transport their son's remains to Nix & Nix Funeral Home in Philadelphia. A week later, Lawrence Butler picked up a 'white, unmarked cardboard box' that the couple thought contained their son's personal belongings, the filing states. The box began to smell and leak fluids in Butler's car. When the couple tried to remove the box, 'biohazardous liquid spilled' onto them, the lawsuit alleges. They reached out to the funeral homes to learn that the box contained their late son's brain. "The family has been destroyed twice," their lawyer, L. Chris Stewart, told Fox 5. The couple says they suffered 'serious mental and emotional distress' as a result of the funeral homes' mishandling of their son's remains, the suit stated. It called the defendants' conduct 'extreme and outrageous.' They've accused the defendants of negligence and intentional infliction of emotional distress, among other claims, for an unspecified amount in damages. 'It was, and it is still, in my heart that I got in my car and I smelled death,' Lawrence Butler told the Associated Press. 'I had to get rid of that car,' he added. 'I just couldn't stand the idea that the remains were in that car.' Stewart told the AP that after speaking to several other funeral homes, he learned the brain is not typically 'separated from [the] body in that fashion and shipped in that fashion.' In the circumstances that the body parts are separated, they are labeled as a biohazard. 'There's no excuse, there is zero excuse for this type of error to happen. For the Georgia funeral home, Southern Cremations, to ship unmarked, bio-hazardous material. For the funeral home here in Philadelphia to hand the parents an unmarked box, not examined, not on a list of the inventory that was the personal items, to not check it,' Stewart told the AP. 'They have not received a single apology to this day from any funeral home.' The owner of Nix & Nix Funeral Homes said that his team didn't know that the box contained brain matter and noted that the state board did a thorough investigation and cleared them of wrongdoing. "Any body parts should be in the body. I don't understand why they would send his brains in a box, a regular box," Julian Nix, the owner of Nix and Nix Funeral Home, told Fox 5. "We immediately reported it to the state board and the medical examiner for inspection," Nix told the outlet. "When the state board investigated, they said that we did everything correct."
