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The NFL Players Association took great pains
to keep the process of selecting, vetting, and voting on candidates for the executive director job completely secret. From amending the Constitution to thereafter safeguarding the names until the board of player representatives received them this week, the union pulled off its goal of complete and total (and ill-advised) secrecy.
The extreme confidentiality necessarily ended once the 48 players who showed up for the selection meeting received the names. NFLPA president JC Tretter admitted that during a Wednesday press conference.
“And if you guys want to continue the confidentiality, we would love to see it, but it’s up to you,” Tretter said, recounting his comments to the player representatives. “And the board unanimously said, ‘We want to keep it confidential.’ And to their credit, they did it.”
They did it, so far. But 48 players attended the meeting. They now know the name(s) of the other candidate(s). Will any of them disclose that information to anyone else?
They should be disclosing that information to their teammates. And their teammates should be asking for that information. The fact that players haven’t already clamored to get the information from their representatives proves that they just don’t care enough to have even the most basic curiosity as to the other candidate(s) that Lloyd Howell beat out.
Ultimately, it’s apathy that allowed the union to pull this off. If the union had a rank-and-file membership that was fully engaged, players would have demanded to know the candidates for the job, so that they could provide their opinions to their elected representatives.
Tretter acknowledged that on Wednesday. “You speak for your locker room, and you trust the people you elect,” Tretter said as to the player representatives.
That doesn’t mean the players give their representatives a blank check to make major decisions on issues like, you know, leadership of the entire union without having a chance to chime in.
Again, the union wanted to minimize external influence over the process. In so doing, they completely disregarded any internal influence over the process, robbing all players of a voice in whether the next executive director should be Lloyd Howell or someone else.
Who would the someone else be? No one knows. Mainly because the players apparently don’t want to know. Proving that their own apathy was indeed weaponized against them.
And if it worked this time, look for it to continue.