Football players at Northwestern University have filed a petition to unionize. According to ESPN, the approval process could take years. Here’s the part of the story that interested me the most:

Northwestern is expected to oppose the action on the grounds athletes are not employees, and the NCAA, the trade association representing the athletic interests of universities, will likely enter the fray as well. . . .

Athletes playing for university-based teams are not currently considered employees by any legal body. They haven’t been since 1953, when the Colorado Supreme Court upheld a determination by the state Industrial Commission that a football player at the University of Denver was an “employee” within the context of the Colorado workers’ compensation statute.

As a result, the university was responsible to provide workers’ compensation for his football injuries. The NCAA responded by coining the term “student-athlete” and mandating its use by universities. Use of that term, and other efforts to enforce the idea that athletes cannot also be employees, ramped up as the NCAA a few years later introduced athletic scholarships, a form of compensation for services provided.