NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has officially welcomed Lloyd Howell to his eventual job as NFL Players Association executive director.
“I want to congratulate Lloyd Howell on his election as Executive Director of the NFL Players Association and to thank DeMaurice Smith for his continued partnership and unstinting work on behalf of NFL players,” Goodell said in a statement. “We look forward to working with Lloyd and his team to continue growing the game and making it better, safer, and more accessible and attractive to fans around the world.”
The union should be hoping that Goodell doesn’t mean what he said. The union should be hoping that Goodell isn’t a fan of the choice. The union should be hoping that Goodell believes he has met his match, and then some.
The relationship between Goodell and Howell should be cordial, but not cozy. It should be adversarial, but not antagonistic. Ultimately, both leaders should have the right amount of respect and fear for each other.
No statement issued through P.R. will ever capture anything other than the most basic and perfunctory views. The real question is this — what does Goodell truly think about this selection?
The union, as best we can tell, was obsessed with secrecy in its selection process due in part to a fear that the league would try to influence the outcome toward a preferred candidate. The league, as we heard it on Tuesday night, doesn’t care who gets the job.
Really, why should the league sweat it? The system already is rigged in favor of management, given that the owners will gladly go without a year of football to get whatever they want in a new CBA, and the players won’t.
Still, a strong union leader needs to be a constant thorn in the side of management. Someone who will constantly poke and prod and pester, about something, anything, everything.
Nothing in Howell’s background suggests that he’s wired that way, frankly. He seems more like someone who should be working at 345 Park Avenue, not someone who should be stirring the pot and staring down oligarchs in order to get fair treatment of the men who risk life and limb every time they step onto a football field.
We’ll keep an open mind on this one. And we hope that the union will soon begin to fill our open mind with information that makes us think Howell was the best choice for the job.
One of the biggest problems with having a search so steeped in silence is that, if/when an outside-the-box hire is made, most people will be confused by it. There was no opportunity for anyone to understand why or how Howell would be the right person to lead the union. That puts him at an inherent disadvantage as he tries to undo the natural consequences of a first impression founded on rampant head-scratching and aggressive Googling.
Maybe that’s a good litmus test. Maybe, if he can adequately dig his way out of the hole into which the selection process has put him, he can effectively deal with Goodell and the billionaires he serves.
