The ruling was unanimous making the unionization effort dead.

NBC News reports.

National Labor Relations Board Dismisses Ruling to Allow College Athletes to Unionize

The federal agency that regulates unions on Monday threw out a request by football players at Northwestern University to unionize.

The unanimous ruling by the National Labor Relations Board was a victory for the college sports establishment, which strenuously opposed the effort to allow college players to engage in collective bargaining with their schools.

In March 2014, a regional NLRB official said the scholarship players at Northwestern, in Evanston, Illinois, were effectively university employees and had the right to hold a unionization election.

But the full NLRB said Monday that such a finding would not meet a key objective of federal law — promoting stability in labor relations.

The decision on Monday noted that the student players have a point in their favor, in that NCAA Division I football “does resemble a professional sport in a number of relevant ways,” most notably that college football is a major money maker.