NFLPA elects David White as interim executive director

The NFL Players Association late Sunday night elected David White as its interim executive director, 17 days after Lloyd Howell Jr. resigned, the union announced.

White is the CEO of 3CG Ventures, an executive coaching and strategic firm, and he serves as the board chair of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. He has extensive labor experience, having served as the leader of the SAG-AFTRA union, with 160,000 members who work in the entertainment industry, from 2009 to 2021.

“I am grateful to the NFLPA’s player leadership for entrusting me with the privilege and responsibility to guide their union as interim executive director,” White said in a statement. “It’s a duty I do not take lightly, and I’m committed to re-establishing trust and ensuring the union is serving its members best. I look forward to working with the entire NFLPA team to protect players’ health and safety, secure their financial well-being, and further strengthen their voice to shape their futures.”

A representative from each of the 32 NFL teams participated in a Board of Player Representatives vote Sunday night, via video conference, after conducting interviews with each candidate over the past two weeks, a union source told ESPN.

On the final short list of candidates, there were multiple internal and external candidates, the source said, declining to identify them. Last week, ESPN reported that a confidential league memo named five finalist candidates, including three union insiders, and two outsiders. White was not on that list.

One of the union insiders, Don Davis, a former player who is the union’s chief player officer, was among the finalists the player representative considered Sunday night, a source told ESPN. Another finalist was Charlie Batch, the former quarterback and player rep, a source said.

“We have full faith in David to take the union forward and operate in the best interests of our membership,” NFLPA president Jalen Reeves-Maybin said in a statement. “David has spent much of his career fighting for collectively bargained rights in the labor movement and is committed to putting players first in all the union does. We are confident that he will inspire solidarity and provide the necessary stability during this period of transition.”

A “thorough search process for a permanent executive director” will begin soon, Reeves-Maybin said. “This process will continue to be player-led, as the strength of our union has and will always lie with our membership.”

White was the only other finalist when Howell was elected in 2023, during the union’s most secretive election process. White attended the two-day election process at a resort in Leesburg, Virginia.

Before the vote of the player reps in 2023, the NFLPA’s executive committee favored White 10-1, according to then-player president J.C. Tretter. Tretter said the executive committee chose not to issue a recommendation to the board of representatives because the executive committee was happy with both finalists and wanted the player representatives to choose without their influence.

Howell resigned July 17 after 10 days of reports by ESPN that he had worked part-time for the Carlyle Group, a private equity firm that is seeking minority ownership in NFL franchises. ESPN also reported that the union and league had struck a confidentiality agreement to keep an arbitrator’s rulings about possible collusion by NFL owners from players, including Tretter, and that Howell had charged a pair of strip club visits to the union.

A week before the election of an interim executive director, Bengals center and executive committee member Ted Karras was asked by ESPN what he was looking for in the next executive director, given Howell’s resignation.

“Anyone in a leadership role within our union needs to live above reproach,” Karras said.

Vikings center and executive committee member Ryan Kelly told reporters last week that Howell’s resignation has been a “stain on the union.”

“The thing that we have to do the most is to regain the trust of the players,” Chargers player representative Josh Harris said last week. “This is the players’ association, and ultimately, we run it, no matter who is in that [executive director] role. It’s a player-led organization, and that’s what we need to get back to.”

ESPN’s Ben Baby contributed to this report.