The NFL Players Association continues to generate headlines for less-than-ideal reasons.
Via Don Van Natta Jr. and Jeff Passan of ESPN.com, the NFLPA placed in-house counsel Heather McPhee on paid administrative leave on Tuesday, after (per the ESPN report) multiple employees filed complaints with the union’s H.R. department about her.
She allegedly failed to follow her supervisor’s direction and allegedly bullied colleagues and disrupted the union’s work environment, per the ESPN report.
The NFLPA will need to have plenty of evidence and documentation to show this move isn’t a pretext for retaliation. She was reportedly instrumental in the investigation arising from financial dealings by NFLPA officials with OneTeam Partners, and some believe she was otherwise sounding internal alarms about other irregularities.
She reportedly retained a lawyer for a possible whistleblower claim against the union. Coincidentally, the lawyer she hired is the same lawyer who handled a whistleblower case against now-former executive director Lloyd Howell’s previous employer, Booz Allen Hamilton. That case resulted in a $377 million settlement.
On May 30, McPhee reportedly sent a memo to the NFLPA executive committee regarding the fact that she had been contacted by federal investigators exploring OneTeam Partners and the NFLPA. She reportedly wrote in the memo that she was ordered to stop working on anything related to the OneTeam Partners probe, “with the threat of employment discipline.” She also urged the executive committee to meet on the matter.
One of the complaints against her was filed by Matt Curtin, the head of NFL Players, Inc. and a member of the OneTeam board of directors. Hired by Howell, Curtin was a candidate for interim executive director, before the sudden resignation of NFLPA chief strategy officer JC Tretter.
If/when she sues, the case will likely expose plenty of things that previously weren’t known publicly. Which won’t be good for the NFLPA. Still, someone apparently decided it’s better to deal with the amorphous threat of future litigation over any potential disruption resulting from McPhee’s ongoing presence in the workplace.
Whether the disruption is good or bad depends on perspective. The NFLPA will likely paint her as a disgruntled employee who was trying to set the union up for a severance agreement, a settlement, or a verdict. She’ll likely explain that, at a time of maximum chaos and misadventure by the union, she was trying to put the interests of the organization over the interests of specific individuals who, in her belief, were engaged in potentially inappropriate conduct.
You know, like using union dues to finance multiple trips to a strip club.
For more on the recent issues with the union, check out my initial visit to Pablo Torre Finds Out. And my second. And my third.
And, as of this morning, my fourth.
As someone texted tonight, “Cue episode five.”
