NFL Players PEUnion

Sports news revealed Lloyd Howell, the head of the NFL Players Association, is also an operating executive for The Carlyle Group, a politically connected private equity underwriter (PEU).  Carlyle is one of three private equity firms approved by the league for partial team ownership stakes.

Howell gets $3.6 million for his full time job as Executive Director of the NFL players union.  His other high paying gigs include The Carlyle position as well as three corporate board seats (Moody's, GE Healthcare and Mantech).  

Numerous handsome paying gigs is common amongst our nation's PEU elite.  Being on multiple sides of a deal is also common in PEU-ville.    Add "player representative-potential team part owner" to the latest PEU irreconcilable conflict.  

Union jobs ain't what they used to be if you get paid $3.6 million and get to keep your PEU side gig.  Welcome to the PEUnion.

Update 7-18-25:  Rather than ditch his Carlyle side gig, Howell resigned as head of the NFL Players Union.  Questions arose as to whose side Howell was on, the players or owners.

Howell resigned after his requests for reimbursement for two strip club visits totaling over $3,000 came to light.  Howell had been reprimanded at his prior employer Booz Allen Hamilton, a Carlyle affiliate, for doing the exact same thing.

Update 9-7-26:  Multiple full time gigs applies to a staffer of Red Team Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota.  The Senior Staffer is also founder and co-owner of a South Dakota lobbying firm and he personally lobbies for Meta, Altria, the Freedom (to work multiple full time jobs) Foundation, South Dakota dairy (milking) and pork (speaks for itself) entities and the Association of Equipment Manufacturers.  They learned well from Dirty Daschle.  There is always a pioneer....or should I say peu-oneer.  

The giant money funnel rarely aims outside the insider class.