Should college athletes be employees of their universities?

Universities exist to educate. The moment athletes become employees, the school becomes their employer first and their educator second, and don't tell me the balance will hold. An employer can cut you for underperformance. An employer doesn't care about your midterm. The entire premise of college athletics, shaky as it's, is that the classroom comes first. People say that premise is already fiction at Alabama and Ohio State. Fine, maybe it's there. But it's not fiction at the other 95 percent of schools, where athletes really are students who play sports, graduate, and become engineers and teachers. Employment status is a one-size-fits-all sledgehammer designed for the 30 programs that print money, and it will land hardest on the thousands of programs where the current model actually works. Reform the top if you must. Don't burn down the whole structure to fix the penthouse.