Despite the recent NLRB victory for private university employees, another college football season is kicking off without a serious public discussion of college athletes’ labor rights.

Since the Northwestern University football team’s unionization efforts failed last summer — after more than a year of stops and starts on the road to recognition — the conversation has seemingly disappeared. Meanwhile, the dangers of the game and the lack of compensation remain an ever-present threat to the minds and bodies of the athletes involved.

This climate of mistreatment — and efforts to strip athletes of their rights to equal pay and free speech — is as old a tradition as the annual homecoming game. The division between viewers’ enjoyment of sports and their interest in the living and working conditions of players is nothing new either.