national labor relations board

Sponsor Note. If you've got a business to incorporate or help run or sell or divide or recombine or create and elaborate series of shell corp… okay maybe not that last one uh what

Right! Richard Hoeg.

He will do all of those things for you except probably the last one. We do not need to send the authorities on a wild goose chase only to find out that the final shell corporation is named "You've Wasted A Lot Of Time LLC." They have important things they should be doing instead. Come on, man.

They're employees, for now. The National Labor Relations Board has been weirdly relevant to college football over the last few years, first shooting down an attempt for players to unionize and now throwing the doors wide open:

College football players and some other athletes in revenue-producing sports at private universities are employees of their schools, the National Labor Relations Board's top lawyer said in a memo Wednesday that would allow those players to unionize and otherwise negotiate over their working conditions. … Abruzzo notes that the act and NLRB law "support the conclusion that certain players at academic institutions are statutory employees, who have the right to act collectively to improve their terms and conditions of employment."

The NLRB tends to change radically depending on which party is in control of the executive branch so anyone fixin' to have a union should get on that horse as fast as possible and try to get something that can't just be swept away in the event the NLRB gets turned over and decides to reverse itself yet again.

As a bonus this lawyer bombed the most gag-inducing term in college sports:

NLRB general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo also threatened action against schools, conferences and the NCAA if they continue to use the term "student-athlete," saying it was created to obscure the employment relationship with college athletes and discourage them from pursuing their rights

I like this person.

This opens the door to seismic changes that will cause administrators to wail about the destruction of college sports while the general public says "Roll Tide" with little to no awareness of what the financial particulars are.

[After THE JUMP: good news and bad news from NFL Draft projections]

Hello. EA has detected a shift in the tides:

EA Sports is coming back to college football.

After last making a college football video game in 2013, the possibility of the game returning had been in limbo. Now, it isn't. EA Sports vice president and general manager, Daryl Holt, told ESPN the game maker will be returning to the space with "EA Sports College Football."

"As we look for the momentum that we're building on in sports, it all starts with the passion of our fans and the opportunities of what they are interested in," Holt said. "I don't think a visit where I go outside wearing a piece of EA Sports branded apparel, that someone doesn't go, 'Hey, when is college football coming back?'"

It will -- at some point. Holt said there is not a date on when the game will return or even a date where the return will be announced other than it won't be coming back for this year.

Announcing a return without a solid date looks like EA saying that they'll have a college football game as soon as they can get a license in a Name and Image era. This is now inevitable enough for EA to start sinking resources into a new version of NCAA Football, except they're going to call it "EA Sports College Football," following along in college football's rich tradition of naming things in the most store-brand fashion possible. (The previous notable entry: The College Football Playoff.)

[After THE JUMP: terrifying dad energies]