Should college athletes be classified as employees with salaries and benefits?

Employee status sounds simple until you administer it. Are athletes employees of the university, the conference, or the NCAA? Who pays unemployment insurance when a senior graduates? Do transfer portal moves trigger labor disputes? What happens to international athletes whose visas forbid employment? The Dartmouth vote applied to one Ivy League basketball team; scaling that ruling to 500,000 athletes across 1,100 schools with different state labor laws is a compliance nightmare. Workers' comp alone would be staggering in football. And collective bargaining at public universities runs into state laws that vary wildly, some banning public-employee strikes entirely. The House settlement's revenue-sharing model already delivers pay without detonating the legal framework. Employee classification promises fairness and delivers a decade of lawsuits.