Why the NFL union scandal revelations are a warning to all athletes

By Scott Ostler, Sports Columnist
July 23, 2025

Football is hard. NFL players bash their heads for a living and wear the pain for life, so they fight for every dollar against the mighty corporate greed machine. They work in what one labor expert calls “one of the most exploitative industries on Earth.” They need a union boss who will fight for them. So they were crushed to learn that the guy watching their back was using union dues to make it rain at places like Tootsie’s Cabaret and Magic City.

And as the amazing tale of the NFL Players’ Association leadership scandal is revealed, realize that strip-club boondoggles are just the tiny tip of the sordid iceberg. Last week, Lloyd Howell resigned as executive director of the NFLPA. A few days later, former player JC Tretter resigned as the union’s chief strategy officer. They are gone but not forgotten. The details of deceit are playing out in news stories and podcasts, in appalling and hilarious detail, while the damage the pair appear to have inflicted on the union and its members will take a while to assess.

Howell and Tretter quit because of information dug up and revealed by the media, mainly journalist Pablo Torre, host of the podcast “Pablo Torre Finds Out,” and ESPN reporters. Increasingly, the NFL and its teams treat reporters as an annoyance, a distraction and a threat to team secrecy. Maybe the NFL is right, because these reporters have exposed the NFL and the NFLPA for deceptive doings, a major embarrassment to the league. In doing so, the media has aided the working stiffs, the players. They are rid of two bad union leaders, and have gained bargaining power against the league. The players are, one hopes, wiser for it.

The players, with the help of the muckraking media, have basically given themselves a playbook, rules on how not to hire the people charged with fighting for their rights, and how to keep an eye on the folks they do hire. One rule: Don’t hire a man who, at his previous job, put strip-club visits on his company expense report, and who was a defendant in a sexual discrimination and retaliation lawsuit that his company settled. Another yellow flag: Howell had been a top exec at that firm, Booz Allen, which was facing allegations of overbilling the federal government of millions of dollars, later paying a massive fine.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/sports/ostler/article/nfl-union-scandal-revelations-warning-athletes-20782516.php