Should college athletes be employees of their universities?

Everyone remembers the Dartmouth ruling, but Northwestern got there first. In 2014, quarterback Kain Colter led an effort to unionize the football team, and an NLRB regional director agreed they were employees. The full board punted in 2015, declining jurisdiction over a single team in a league of mostly public schools, but it never said the players weren't employees. ESPN covered every step of it. That was a decade ago, before NIL, before the portal, before Alston. The arguments for employment have only gotten stronger since, and the board's dodge looks weaker every year. Northwestern was the warning shot. Dartmouth was the hit. The third case will be the one that sticks, and schools should be preparing for it instead of pretending 2015 settled anything.