NFL Players Association executive director Lloyd Howell Jr. was paid $3.4 million last year to have one of the most powerful jobs in all of sports -- overseeing a 2,400-member strong labor union with assets of over $1 billion.
It apparently wasn't enough money -- or enough work.
Howell also maintained an outside part-time consulting job with the Carlyle Group, a private equity firm that, coincidentally we are sure, holds league approval to seek minority ownership in NFL franchises, as ESPN's Don Van Natta Jr. and Kalyn Kahler first reported Thursday.
"It would be an outrageous conflict for the head of a labor union to have an interest in a third party that is aligned with the NFL," Jim Quinn, who spent 25 years as the union's outside counsel, told ESPN, noting previous executive directors never had any side gigs, let alone one waving a red flag like this.