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After last Tuesday’s NLRB decision that ruled in favor of Columbia's graduate students unionizing, debate surrounding the Northwestern student athlete case has reemerged. The decision could lead to the NLRB ruling in favor of student athletes seeking to collectively bargain in the future, although it will have no direct impact on reversing the Northwestern case. Originally concerned with maintaining the “symbiotic relationship” between football teams and and players, the NLRB never ruled on if the players were in fact employees. This is significant because going forward, a different group of student athletes may be able to organize if they were able to argue that the “symbiotic relationship” would not be tainted. One proposed option would be to unionize the Atlantic Coast Conference, which is composed of entirely private universities. The “symbiotic relationship” argument would be disputed because the bargaining unit could theoretically create a sub-conference within itself and compete.