Last spring, Michael LeRoy called his shot.
LeRoy, a law professor at Illinois who has published extensive work on labor policy, believed that the NCAA’s foray into NIL was an evolutionary step to an employment relationship between schools and athletes.
“The Pandora’s Box,” he said then, “has been opened.”
Roughly 18 months later, here we are. Athletes are closer than ever to becoming employees of their universities thanks to a memo released Wednesday from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). NLRB general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo has deemed that some college athletes are employees under the National Labor Relations Act.