It’s becoming harder and harder to keep up with the various twists and turns in the disintegration of Lloyd Howell’s two-year run as the NFL Players Association’s executive director.
Here’s something that seems odd, to say the least. On Thursday, ESPN reported on the existence of an internal disagreement regarding whether the NFLPA board of players representatives knew that Howell’s conduct had become a focal point of the 2011 gender discrimination and retaliation case against his former employer, Booz Allen Hamilton. On Friday, in its report regarding Howell’s decision to charge strip-club expenses to the union, ESPN reported that Howell was involved in a similar incident in 2015, at Booz Allen.
So here’s the question. Did the NFLPA know about Howell’s alleged Booz Allen strip-club misadventures?
There’s been no indication that the union did, but that’s not a huge surprise. The entire hiring process was cloaked in extreme secrecy. Anything generated by the search firm that handled the process, Russell Reynolds, wouldn’t have been made available for public consumption because hardly anything (if anything at all) was made available for public consumption.
And what about Russell Reynolds? Given that Howell’s entire tenure seemed to be tainted with conflict of interest and quid pro quo, it should be no surprise to trip over a potential conflict of interest/quid pro quo in connection with the search process that resulted in Howell being hired.
On that point, we offer for consideration the name Anamika Gupta. A person by that name worked for Russell Reynolds. A person by that name has since been hired by Howell to be the NFLPA’s chief of staff.
Apparently, it’s the same person.
(Also, a person by that same name previously worked for . . . wait for it . . . Booz Allen Hamilton.)
Given Friday’s developments, we asked the NFLPA earlier today whether the union knew about Howell’s reported strip-club expense-report situation at Booz Allen. We also asked for more information about Gupta’s role at Russell Reynolds (if it’s the same Anamika Gupta who is now the NFLPA chief of staff). We likewise asked for information about her role at Russell Reynolds, including whether and to what extent she was involved in the NFLPA executive director search and, more specifically, the vetting of Lloyd Howell.
Three hours later, we have received no response. If/when we do, we’ll promptly update this item.
