More changes are coming to the leadership of the NFL Players Association, as chief strategy officer JC Tretter will resign from his post amid scrutiny over hiring former NFLPA executive director Lloyd Howell, who resigned on July 18.
“Over the last couple [of] days, it has gotten very, very hard for my family, and that’s something I can’t deal with,” Tretter told CBS Sports. “The short bullet points are: I have no interest in being [executive director]. I have no interest in being considered. I’ve let the executive committee know that. I’m also going to leave the NFLPA in the coming days because I don’t have anything left to give the organization.
“I want to get my story out there, and I don’t want it to look like this was sour grapes or I didn’t get the job and I wanted the job. All I want to do is tell my story and then go be with my family.”
Tretter, who was also formerly president of the NFLPA, was among the key figures of the group who hired Howell as executive director in 2023. Howell came under scrutiny in recent weeks after it was revealed that the NFLPA and the league had a confidentiality agreement to keep quiet regarding an arbitrator’s ruling about possible collusion by owners over quarterback salaries, per ESPN. It was later reported that Howell maintained a part-time consulting job with the Carlyle Group, a private equity firm that holds league approval to seek minority ownership in NFL franchises.
What’s more, two player representatives who voted for Howell to be executive director were not aware that he was sued in 2011 for sexual discrimination and retaliation while he was a senior executive at Booz Allen, per ESPN’s report.
Tretter defended the process that led to Howell becoming executive director in his conversation with CBS Sports. However, he also shared that he, along with 10 other members of the executive committee, voted for former SAG-AFTRA director David White to get the position, but they were overruled by the board of team representatives.
“We said, ‘OK, what do we want to do with this information?'” Tretter told CBS Sports. “And we said, ‘Listen, if this is the best candidate, the board will see that. They’ll agree.’ But we’re not going to put our thumb on the scale. We’re not going to push them. We’re not going to go in there after doing all this work and make it look like we jammed in the person that we would’ve picked after this moment. So we’re going to let both people interview, and we’re going to let the board make the decision. So the idea that I was jamming anybody through was false.”
Prior to his resignation, Tretter was viewed as one of the two leading candidates to become the NFLPA’s interim executive director. Current NFLPA senior director of affairs Don Davis is also a leading candidate, per The Athletic.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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