Should college athletes be employees of their universities?

I taught two sections of freshman composition as a PhD student, about 15 hours a week with grading. We unionized in 2017 and the university recognized us as employees with bargaining rights over pay and workload. Meanwhile the starting quarterback was putting in 40-plus hours under a coach who controlled his schedule, his diet, his social media, and his class times, and he was legally a volunteer. The NLRB has held for decades that graduate assistants doing university work are employees. Athletes do more university work, under tighter control, generating enormously more revenue. If the TA grading your papers is an employee, the linebacker selling out your stadium is one too. There's no principled line here, just a profitable one.