A question has emerged in recent days regarding whether the search for a new NFL Players Association executive director complied with the union’s Constitution. As recently noted by Ben Fischer of Sports Business Journal, the Constitution requires that the board of player representatives receive the names of at least two and no more than four candidates at least 30 days before the election.
As one league source explained it to PFT, multiple players representatives first heard the names of candidates this week. They previously had known nothing.
In the statement announcing the hiring of Lloyd Howell, the union said that it complied with the applicable rules: “The Board of Player Representatives vote took place after a months-long and rigorous search process which was led by the NFLPA’s Executive Officers and executive search firm, Russell Reynolds, with General Counsel Tom DePaso serving as legal counsel for the search committee. The process was executed in accordance with the NFLPA’s Constitution and all Board amendments, and exercised best practices in executive search and the union governance.”
The key could be this phrase — “all Board amendments.” The union’s Constitution is posted on the NFLPA website; the publicly-available document includes no “Board amendments.”
It’s possible that the Board of Player Representatives amended the Constitution to waive the 30-day requirement in this case, in order to promote a misplaced obsession with confidentiality and secrecy. Really, why mention “all Board amendments” unless those amendments excuse what otherwise would be a violation of the NFLPA Constitution?
We’ll learn more, hopefully, during an upcoming conference call regarding the hiring of Lloyd Howell. One of the biggest questions will be how the union managed to keep the names of the finalists so secret, given the plain terms of the Constitution.