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The UC Berkeley athletics department took in $95.5 million last year from sources like ticket sales and the sale of media rights. The players received little more than their scholarships, if that.

That’s because NCAA rules prohibit students from accepting paid sponsorships or endorsements. But a bill making its way through the Legislature would make California the first state to let student-athletes at public and private campuses profit from the use of their name, image or likeness beginning in 2023. And for the first time, student-athletes could hire a licensed representative.

Fans of SB206 say it’s long overdue. Those rooting for the bill known as the Fair Pay to Play Act say campus athletes should be able to earn a living while at school, and point out that athletes are often low-income students of color and many are women. The vast majority will not go on to lucrative careers in professional sports, so permitting endorsements while they are at the height of their athletic prowess would help them and their families, proponents say.

But heavy hitters on the opposing side — the University of California, California State University and the National Collegiate Athletic Association itself — warn that if SB206 becomes law, student-athletes and their teams could be barred from NCAA championship tournaments.

“It likely would have a negative impact on the exact student-athletes it intends to assist,” NCAA President Mark Emmert wrote cryptically last month to lawmakers, referring to “potential unintended consequences” of the bill.

UC’s legislative director, Tyler Aguilar, put it more plainly.

“This bill would put the student-athlete, their teammates, and the athletics programs at risk of losing NCAA and conference eligibility, which would result in the loss of educational benefits and other competitive opportunities for UC student-athletes,” Aguilar wrote to Assemblyman Jose Medina, D-Riverside, on Monday.

Medina chairs the Committee on Higher Education, which will consider the bill Tuesday in Sacramento. The Senate approved the bill in May, and last month it passed out of the Assembly’s Committee on Arts, Entertainment, Sports, Tourism and Internet Media.

CSU — with 21 of its 23 campuses competing in the NCAA — and UC also warn that the bill could cost them millions of dollars in NCAA fines and lost revenue if they are barred from play. Also costly, they say, would be having to hire compliance staff.

The bill’s author, state Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, says such fears are unfounded because state laws supersede trade group rules.

“Trade organizations like the NCAA are prohibited under U.S. antitrust law from excluding institutions merely for following a state law,” Skinner told The Chronicle. And, she said, they “can’t fine California schools for following a state law.”

But just in case, the bill prohibits any “organization with authority over intercollegiate athletics” from kicking out colleges from intercollegiate athletics if students sell their name, image or likeness. It also prohibits revoking a student’s scholarship for the same reason.

“College sports is a hugely lucrative industry that derives its revenues entirely from student-athletes,” Skinner said. “These athletes are denied the same basic rights that all other students and all other Californians enjoy: their right to market their own name, image and likeness.”

A sponsor of the bill is the Alliance for Boys and Men of Color, a national nonprofit based in Oakland.

“We see this as a civil rights issue,” said Marc Philpart, the group’s principal coordinator. “It’s an issue of economic exploitation.”

College athletes are often young men of color, and “millions of dollars a year are made in California off of their labor,” he said. “Yet they don’t have an opportunity to reap a reward.” It’s money that could help them and their families emerge from intergenerational poverty, he said.

Many other student-athletes are women, like Erin Cafaro, who urged lawmakers last month to vote for SB206. Cafaro rowed for Cal before graduating in 2006 with a degree in political science and went on to win gold medals in the 2008 and 2012 Olympics.

Student-athletes are so busy training while in school that they can’t always develop the skills or gather the experience needed to help them get a job in their field after graduating, Cafaro told The Chronicle. She said being able to sell their images and name rights would help.

In Cafaro’s case, it took two years of intense work after graduating to make the Olympic team. “So having some sort of financial support would have been hugely beneficial to help me bridge my dreams,” she said. And then there’s the sheer fairness of it, she said, pointing to social media sensations like recently graduated UCLA gymnast Katelyn Ohashi, who has thousands of followers “but was not able to benefit from her name or likeness.”

Yet the possibility of losing eligibility to play for NCAA championships carries weight with students, as does the fear that the bill could create disarray in intercollegiate athletics if athletes entering college flood into California for the financial lure of selling their names and images.

“California’s going to get kicked out. Or the NCAA is going to have numerous amounts of complaints from the other schools and conferences,” said Imani McDonald, who played soccer for Cal State Long Beach until graduating in May, and testified against SB206 last month.

“Why would any student-athlete go to, say, Arkansas, if they can make more money in California?” she asked during a Chronicle interview.

In May, the NCAA created a working group to study the issue.

Two months earlier, Rep. Mark Walker, R-N.C., introduced the Student-Athlete Equity Act, bipartisan legislation intended to force the NCAA to change its rules by changing the tax code’s definition of amateur sports organizations.

Lawmakers in Colorado and Washington introduced similar bills this year. Skinner’s bill, introduced in February, is the only one yet to advance.

In his June 17 letter, Emmert, the NCAA president, asked the chairmen of two California Assembly committees to table their votes on SB206 until his working group has a chance to consider its proposal first, in October.

Neither committee complied. If the bill makes it out of the Assembly’s Higher Education Committee on Tuesday, it will still need to survive votes in the Appropriations Committee and the full Assembly before returning to the Senate for a vote on the amended version. If it reaches Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk, he would have until mid-October to consider it.

Nanette Asimov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: nasimov@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @NanetteAsimov