A seismic shift in college sports is on the horizon with a move taken by the National Labor Relations Board.
A memorandum from the NLRB classifies student-athletes attending private institutions as employees.
Sports Attorney Doug Sunseri describes the rippling effect this move could have:
"If they're now treated as employees, they're subject to Title VII employment rights, they're entitled to workers compensation, and they're entitled to a lot of other rights that employees are entitled to."
Sunseri surmises the move by NLRB likely stems from the Supreme Court decision where student-athletes are now allowed to benefit from the name, image, and likeness on a collegiate level and the attempted unionization of players at Northwestern University six years ago.
Sunseri describes the advantages of the move by the NLRB:
"With the NLRB saying 'as far as we're concerned, student-athletes could unionize, and that we consider them as employees'. And so when you're an employee that calls for a whole new set of laws, rights."
But it also means unintended consequences:
"There's a lot of unintended consequences, here's one that nobody's ever going to think about: If you're a scholarship athlete at LSU, and you go and play in California, will you be taxed the value of your scholarship?"
Sunseri says as an employee and not a student-athlete, given California's broad taxation laws and actions, that's definitely possible.
"If you’re a Tulane student with a scholarship worth $200,000 and play a football game in California, they might tax you three or four thousand dollars on your scholarship."
Sunseri describes the changes to the way the NCAA and collegiate sports in general will be played in the coming years as volcanic.
"In my opinion, if this is the truth, it will change college sports so radically different from what we know it today, it will be almost unrecognizable."