THE plight of college athletes in America has become something of a cause celebre in recent years. Journalists have taken the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) to task for reaping billions of dollars in revenue while paying players nothing but a scholarship of dubious value. Former players have launched a class-action lawsuit against the organisation, which oversees intercollegiate sports, for unpaid labour and unauthorised use of players’ likenesses in advertising and video games. Earlier this month an antitrust claim was filed against the NCAA, accusing it of price-fixing its athletes’ compensation. Yet the association has refused to entertain any fundamental reform to its exploitative system. That position may not be sustainable much longer. In an unprecedented decision, on March 26th the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) approved a request from American football players at Northwestern University to form a union. Assuming it is sustained on appeal, if over 30% of the team votes to join, the school would be legally obligated to negotiate an employment contract with them.

Northwestern claimed that its relationship to its “student-athletes” was predominantly educational rather than economic. It cited NCAA rules that limit sporting activities to 20 hours a week during the season and eight in the offseason, and argued that the challenge of balancing football and academics formed part of the learning experience it provided. In previous cases when graduate students have sought to unionise in their capacity as teachers, arbiters have generally been persuaded by these points and rejected the petitions.

But Peter Sung Ohr, the NLRB’s regional director in Chicago, found that Northwestern’s football players were athletes first and students second, and were therefore employees of the university. He noted that they said they spent 40-60 hours a week on football virtually year-round between practice, training, film study, team meetings and travel—which is standard operating procedure even though it violates NCAA rules. “Not only is this more hours than many undisputed full-time employees work at their jobs, it is also many more hours than the players spend on their studies,” he wrote. Because of these requirements, coaches often forbid athletes from taking certain classes or even choosing particular majors because of scheduling conflicts. Mr Ohr also highlighted the difference between the personal lives of football players and their classmates: the team’s staff monitors their posts on social media, reviews their housing leases and keeps files on the cars they drive.

The decision will hardly transform college sports overnight. It only applies to Northwestern, which on its own cannot dictate NCAA policy: if the school did agree to pay its athletes, the association would simply kick it out and declare its players ineligible. Players at other universities could certainly use Mr Ohr’s ruling as a precedent. But just 20 of the 120 schools in college football’s top division are private, and organising athletes at public universities would be far harder because of “right-to-work” laws that restrict collective bargaining in 24 states. The short tenure of college sports careers also limits unions’ negotiating leverage: it is hard to imagine any player, not to mention a majority of an entire team, choosing to strike—which would probably entail sacrificing any chance of future riches as a professional athlete—so that future generations of college players would enjoy a fairer relationship with their schools.

Nonetheless, the ruling still opens new paths to reform. A hypothetical union might delay a demand for wages in order to prioritise working conditions and health protections—which are essential in a brutal sport like American football that has been closely tied to devastating brain trauma. That would allow Northwestern to remain in the NCAA while attracting superior players, and force other schools to match any new policies in order to compete for the best athletic talent. Andrew Zimbalist, a sports economist at Smith College, envisions another potential model for change: a critical mass of unionised and mostly private colleges could split off from the NCAA and form their own professional league. The remaining schools would soon be left with mediocre players unless they started paying athletes as well.

The NCAA has proven remarkably resilient in the face of public pressure, and can be counted on to use every tool at its disposal to maintain the status quo. But Mr Ohr’s decision could quite plausibly represent a tipping point that eventually leads the association to concede some accommodations to its critics in order to avoid outright collapse.