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

Employees can be fired. That is the part nobody puts on the poster. The moment athletes become university employees, the four-year scholarship becomes an at-will job, and coaches gain the power every employer has: cut the underperformer. Today a school that pulls a scholarship for athletic reasons faces outrage and, in the Power conferences, rules guaranteeing multi-year aid. Make the player an employee and the third-string linebacker with a bad knee is a layoff, not a tragedy. The NLRB framework the Dartmouth players used is real labor law, with management rights included. NLRB. Athletes would gain bargaining rights and lose the paternalistic protections that currently keep them on scholarship when they stop producing. For the stars, that trade might pay. For the 98 percent who will never go pro, trading guaranteed aid for the right to be terminated is a catastrophic bargain.