As a graduate student at Harvard Business School, Lloyd Howell would spend his nights rehearsing his future. He and a classmate would pepper each other with questions, simulating the high-stakes interviews with Fortune 500 companies they envisioned having in the years that would follow.

“What if they ask you this?”

Advertisement

“What if a big merger and acquisition comes along?”

“Do you raise your hand or not raise your hand?”

The idea was to ready themselves for the curveballs that would come. No surprises meant no panic.

“We would throw everything in the mix, and the value was that we would start thinking about how to navigate waters,” Howell said years later at the Wharton School.

More than three decades later, the bulk of which Howell spent climbing the ranks at Booz Allen Hamilton — a D.C.-based defense contractor and consulting firm with expertise in cybersecurity, engineering and espionage — he’s been tasked with navigating some of the choppiest waters in professional sports. As the newly-elected executive director of the NFL Players Association, it will soon be Howell’s job to both protect and advance the interests of some 2,000 players in a league controlled by billionaire owners and a commissioner with an ever-expanding reach.

Howell’s election Wednesday, after a 16-month process shrouded in secrecy — a mandate from the NFLPA’s 11-person, player-led search committee — underscores what looms in seven short years: another consequential CBA negotiation that could reshape the United States’ most popular sports league.

Howell, 57, is the surprise pick to lead that charge, a man with no previous ties to professional sports, let alone the NFL. He will soon become the face of the players’ union and, quite possibly, Roger Goodell’s stiffest adversary — or that of Goodell’s successor.

Howell said Wednesday he and Goodell have never met. They will soon.

“I look forward to meeting him when the time is right,” he said.

“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,” Goodell said in a statement.

Advertisement

Howell will succeed DeMaurice Smith, who has held the role of NFLPA executive director since 2009 and will complete his four-term tenure in 2024.

Though both Smith and Howell were tapped for the role after having no previous connections to the NFL (unlike longtime NFLPA boss Gene Upshaw, a Pro Football Hall of Famer), Smith arrived as a veteran trial lawyer, an expert in high-stakes litigation. Howell has no experience in law, and his election speaks to a different approach by the NFLPA: the need for a more collaborative leader who can bridge the varied interests of the membership, CEO-style, in an uphill battle against ownership and the commissioner.

That’s what Howell’s credentials speak to, and that’s what the players believe they are getting.

“At the top of the list is my ability to bring teams together,” Howell said.

The union membership oozed with excitement Wednesday, thrilled that they’d been able to keep such a high-profile process confidential, invigorated by what the promise of what Howell can bring. JC Tretter, the NFLPA’s president, compared the closing moments of the vote to the atmosphere of a triumphant locker room.

“I haven’t been to a union meeting with this amount of happiness,” Tretter said. “I can’t begin to tell you how special that moment was. It’s a moment I’ll always remember.”

The NFLPA’s executive committee, according to Tretter, “cast a wide net” in its search, aided by the help of the consulting firm Russell Reynolds Associates. Though at least three former NFL players were considered for the role, as reported by The Athletic — Matt Schaub, Domonique Foxworth and Hall of Famer Kellen Winslow Sr. — on-field NFL experience was not a requirement, nor an emphasis.

“You don’t need to be a former player to be able to motivate and galvanize a group of people,” Tretter said. “We were really looking for anybody that was capable of doing that, and we found a great one.”

Advertisement

Count among those qualities that landed Howell this appointment a proven ability to unify factions with competing interests. He’s six months removed from retiring from Booz Allen Hamilton as CFO and treasurer, and before that, held a slew of leadership roles within the company, often working closely with some of the firm’s key clients, among them the United States Navy and Marine Corps. As recently as March 2022, the company boasted a 12-month revenue of $8.4 billion, and professes to be “trusted by some of the world’s most sensitive agencies.”

Howell was lauded for guiding the company “through a period of tremendous growth and transformation.”

His résumé otherwise speaks to an impressive career: He’s a board member of Moody’s Corporation and General Electric Healthcare, and a trustee at his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned an electrical engineering degree in 1988 before first joining BAH as a consultant. He later left the company to earn his MBA from Harvard, then worked on Wall Street for two years before returning to BAH in 1995.

“Over the course of my career, not everyone agrees, not everyone is on the same page, but building a consensus, prioritized list of priorities and galvanizing, motivating (and) keeping the team informed about progress and adjustments to what we’re trying to do — I have a talent for doing that,” Howell said.

“I think that’s what resonated with the board and why I’m here today.”

But professional sports is a different arena, and the NFLPA is banking on Howell’s fresh perspective to guide it through the challenges of the next few years. Another significant factor in his election: his response to a series of questions about the NFLPA’s most recent CBA negotiation in 2020 and his approach to the coming one. (The league’s current CBA expires in March of 2030.) When it comes to his impending tenure, no issue or outcome will carry as much weight.

“The board wanted to see how I thought, how I organized my thoughts, how I might have done things similarly or differently, and how the strategy might change,” Howell said. “We certainly got into it.”

Advertisement

He resisted going further and divulging any details, but did offer this, asked about the response he received: “I’m here today in front of you. So part of what I said resonated with the board.”

As for 2030?

“I think, to be frank, I need some time and opportunity to look at all options,” he said. “Today, I’m not in a position to say: ‘This is exactly what I’m going to do to create leverage (for) the players. These are the tactics we’re going to use.’ I think a thoughtful understanding of what we did in the past, a thoughtful approach to what I believe and the board believes will be effective going forward is the agenda that we’re going to pursue.

“(But) I do have thoughts about the current CBA,” he added, “and I do have thoughts on what we want to do moving forward.”

A former high school athlete and self-described “weekend warrior,” Howell vowed to use the insight and experience gained over his lengthy career to serve the players he now works on behalf of. He intends to meet with them in the coming months to better gauge their most pressing interests and concerns, of which there undoubtedly will be several.

Though players’ salaries are as high as they’ve ever been, do they feel those numbers are reflective of the league’s skyrocketing television contracts and soaring profits?

After a spate of recent suspensions, is the NFL doing enough to educate its players on its gambling policy, particularly while it continues to promote and benefit from its lucrative relationships with sportsbooks and casinos?

Will the players’ union continue its fight for all-grass playing surfaces instead of the synthetic turf fields they believe lead to far more injuries?

It won’t stop there. A host of issues remain relevant to the players, chief among them health and safety concerns and post-career care.

GO DEEPER

Inside the fight over NFL playing surfaces

It will be Howell’s job to navigate these interests — then deliver.

Advertisement

“My sole mission is to advocate and push and drive and deliver what is in the best interest of the players,” Howell said, referring to himself as “an agent of service for the players.”

“We’re going to get into (it), as you would expect us to,” he added. “It’s going to be my job to be effective and to get the ball across the line, no pun intended.”

It’s easy to say that on Day 1. The coming years will reveal if Howell — the surprise pick no one saw coming — was indeed the right one.

Photo: NFLPA

The Football 100, the definitive ranking of the NFL’s best 100 players of all time, goes on sale this fall. Pre-order it here.