On Tuesday, the NLRB publicly released a memorandum stating that scholarship football players at some private colleges have employment rights such as the ability to bargain for a safe work environment and higher pay. The memo, drafted over a year and a half ago by NLRB general counsel Robert Griffin, was in response to the NLRB in Washington ruling that Northwestern football players did not have the right to unionize. The memo does not affect the 2015 decision, nor does it allow student athletes to unionize.
See "NLRB Lawyer Sees Some College Football Players as Employees, with Rights", Ben Strauss, The New York Times, February 2, 2017