A Tale of Two Unions

This is a free online newsletter for Jason Stahl, Executive Director of the College Football Players Association (CFBPA). If you are a past, present or future college football player, I ask that you consider becoming a member of the CFBPA. For a short YouTube introduction on the CFBPA, click here. Members of the general public who would like to support the CFBPA can donate at this link or volunteer at this link.

Hello readers and I apologize for my long delay in writing. Since starting the College Football Players Association nearly five years ago, I’ve always tried to publish regular newsletters with updates and analysis. However, there is sometimes much work to do behind the scenes and my publishing schedule becomes irregular. This was one of those times and for that, I apologize.

Today I want to conclude my newsletter series focusing on the broad topics of college athletes as employees, their unionization and their eventual collective bargaining. In part one of this series, I focused on the need for college athletes to have real labor rights as employees. In part two, I focused on how the Johnson v. NCAA court case might help in bringing about employee status and collective bargaining. In part three, I focused on how athletes, and athletes alone, can be the only ones who initiate the process of unionization and legally-binding collective bargaining.

In today’s final part four, I want to focus on the type of union that college athletes should want. Thankfully, the news of this past week has given college athletes two sports unions engaging in the activities of union operation. From these two case studies, I think college athletes could learn a lot about the type of union they want and how they should want it to be run.

First, this past week brought news that the Women’s National Basketball Player’s Association (WNBPA) negotiated a new collective bargaining agreement (CBA) with the league. This week, players unanimously approved the deal with more than 90% of players voting to approve the seven-year agreement.

At the College Football Players Association we commend the players for achieving this historic new deal which validates player efforts in building interest in the league over this decade. Union leadership put over 100 hours into negotiating the deal and their efforts achieved historic results. ESPN has the full details of the agreement, but several amazing salary gains stood out.

Over the life of the seven-year agreement, players will receive over $1 billion in salary and benefits. Under a new, much higher, revenue share and salary cap players received massive raises. League minimum for player salaries, which was at $66,000, now goes up to between $270,000 and $300,000 depending on years of service. By the end of the agreement, league minimums will be between $340,000 and $380,000. Average pay, which currently stands at $120,000 will now move to $583,000 and will rise to $1 million by the end of the agreement. Player maximums, currently at $250,000, will now rise to $1.4 million and will be at $2.4 million by the end of the agreement. Players also won continued housing benefits which were central to their platform. Through these gains, WNBA players showed college football players exactly how much there is to gain by acting collectively regardless of where you currently stand on the pay scale.

What was even more interesting than the deal itself is how it came about—through painstaking negotiations where the players were involved and where they held union leadership to the fire. In the middle of negotiations, high-profile WNBA players called out their union’s executive director publicly for not being engaged enough with players and player leadership. This really seemed to provide the impetus for re-engaged discussion with players more directly involved. In this way players showed college athletes how big gains are achieved: through grass-roots mobilization, action and a clear platform setting forward player priorities.

I would unfortunately contrast what we’re seeing at the WNBPA with recent developments at the National Football League Players Association (NFLPA). From 2009 until 2023, the union’s executive director was DeMaurice Smith. Smith seemed to ably represent players during that time through multiple CBA negotiations as he was elected and re-elected twice to the position.

In 2023, however, Smith was replaced by Lloyd Howell Jr. whose tenure was marred by controversy. Howell was elected to the position in a secretive manner which could only be done after the union’s search bylaws had been changed to allow for it. Howell also seemed a strange pick for the job. For more than 34 years he had been the chief financial officer of the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton. He had no labor background or interest in labor and was largely picked to grow the union’s business-side revenue.

Howell would resign the position just two years later in July 2025 after a series of problems stemming from his leadership. First, in May of 2025, it came to light that the FBI was investigating the NFLPA’s group licensing firm OneTeam Partners. That investigation is still ongoing. Next, it came out that Howell was working as a paid, part-time consultant for the Carlyle Group—a private equity firm seeking ownership in NFL teams. This is a clear conflict of interest and was done despite Howell’s massive $3+ million a year salary.

Most egregiously, in my opinion, during his term “Howell struck a confidentiality agreement with the NFL . . . that hid the details of a January arbitration decision from players, including a finding that league executives urged team owners to reduce guaranteed player compensation.” This direct collusion with owners is simply antithetical to union leadership. Adding insult to injury—and finally leading to Howell’s resignation—it came out that he had expensed to the union strip club visits he took with players.

This almost cartoonishly corrupt behavior stems from the original problem with hiring Howell: he was first and foremost a for-profit businessman who was uninterested in building a strong labor organization. In short, he saw himself first and foremost as a partner to the NFL, not as the man tasked with protecting the players and their interests.

After Howell left, David White became the interim Executive Director for a year. White had previously served as the Hollywood actors’ union chief and so seemed a good fit for the job on paper. He tried to get the permanent position but just last week lost the permanent position election to JC Tretter.

On paper, Tretter looks like a strong pick. He was the former elected player president of the union and as such becomes just the second NFLPA Executive Director who was also a player. He has also been a vocal advocate for player safety issues and developed the NFLPA “report cards” that have been the impetus for clubs making player-centric improvements.

However, Tretter was also president of the union when it hired Howell as Executive Director. Howell immediately then hired Tretter as his “Chief Strategy Officer,” a new position created specifically for Tretter. When Howell resigned from the union, Tretter also resigned saying he had no interest in being considered for the position of Executive Director. When it came out that he was a finalist for the position, many who worked inside the union publicly leaked their concerns to the press.

It remains to be seen where the NFLPA goes from here. I hope Tretter can turn things around but there were two problems from the Howell years that he would need to find solutions for. First, Howell’s background as a for-profit businessman was ill-suited to lead a labor organization. Howell became focused on “partnering” with the league at the expense of protecting the players. I remain hopeful that Tretter can shift this dynamic given that he was a former player and thus has the potential to be a labor-first Executive Director. The real test of this is if Tretter caves to an 18-game regular season which players have said they adamantly do not want.

The second problem created during Howell’s term was that the union became too detached from the rank-and-file members. Tretter seems like he was part of this problem and so this will be trickier for him to fix. Whether he wants to fix it at all remains to be seen.

In the end analysis, college football players can take two big lessons from these two unions. First, be a player-driven, grass-roots driven organization in order to remain strong during negotiations. Such labor organizations achieve the strongest gains. Second, be wary of for-profit businessman leaders who want to first and foremost “partner” with clubs at the expense of protecting players. In the end, these types of leaders will be looking to consolidate their own power and line their own pockets at the expense of players.