I'm neither an attorney nor a labor expert, but common sense tells me that the players who want to be considered employees are on thin ice with this. Here is an article describing Pat Fitzgerald's testimony: http://college-football.si.com/2014/02/21/pat-fitzgerald-northwestern-nlrb-hearing/?xid=si_ncaaf
I saw that, what an idiot that QB is. One thing I know about schools like Northwestern is that academics are taken seriously, as they are at Stanford and Notre Dame. He clearly was just playing the athlete as Slave card and he badly overplayed it.