Should college athletes be employees of their universities?

I walked on to a Big 12 football roster in 2019 and earned a scholarship for my junior year. Tore my ACL in spring ball that March. The school paid for the surgery, and I'm grateful for that, but my scholarship wasn't renewed the next fall. An employee who gets hurt on the job gets workers' comp and can't be fired for the injury. I got a handshake and a bill for the rehab the team decided I no longer needed. The one-year renewable scholarship is the whole scam: it looks like compensation but behaves like an at-will job with none of the protections. If I'm working 40 hours a week for the program, I should at least get the deal every other campus worker gets.