California Senate Bill 193 sure sounds like a good idea.

More scholarship money for college athletes. The freedom to transfer to another school if your coach takes another job. Year-round medical coverage. Guaranteed four-year scholarships. The ability to hire a sports agent to seek career advice.

SB 193 even has a politically correct nickname: The Student-Athletes' Bill of Rights. So why are college administrators saying such nasty things about it?

"It scares the heck out of me," Stanford Athletic Director Ted Leland said.

"There would be devastating repercussions," University of California, Berkeley, Associate Athletic Director Dan Coonan argued.

"I have a knot in my sto-

mach about the whole issue," Pacific-10 Conference Commissioner Tom Hansen said.

SB 193, sponsored by state Sen. Kevin Murray, D-Los Angeles, seeks solutions to a variety of issues that have bedeviled college sports for years. Even its opponents find merit with much of the proposed bill.

"I think Sen. Murray is well-meaning. I agree with a good portion of his platform," Leland said. "It's his remedy that has so many unintended consequences that we can't live with it."

The chief potential side effect?

If passed, the bill would create California law that could make it impossible for 47 colleges and universities in the state to remain members of the NCAA.

That would mean no participation in the NCAA basketball tournament or football bowl games, and none of the nearly $37 million funneled to state schools last year through the NCAA and related television contracts.

The Pac-10 theoretically would become the Pac-6, with Cal, Stanford, USC and UCLA scrambling to devise a conference of California schools separate from the NCAA.

Ramogi Huma says that doomsday scenario won't happen. Huma is the founder of the California Athletes Coalition, an advocacy group he started three years ago after playing football at UCLA. He also was the voice that convinced Murray to draft SB 193.

"It's a huge bluff," Huma said of the threats that California schools would be booted from the NCAA if the legislation passes. "They're bluffing with everything they have. They have deep pockets and they're bluffing."

The NCAA needs California too much, Huma said, and other states would be prompted to make similar changes that would force the NCAA's hand.

Huma is very much an underdog in this battle, and he knows it. But his cause survived Round 1 of the battle, winning approval by a 26-10 margin in the state Senate last spring.

The bill then was sent to the Assembly's Committee on Higher Education, which declined last summer to make a decision. Instead, SB 193 remains in committee as a two-year bill, meaning the Legislature can consider it until the fall of 2004.

To become law, it must survive the Assembly committee, win approval from the entire Assembly, then get a signature from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Could it happen?

"I would hope reasonable people understand the dangers this bill poses," Hansen said. "And yet I am concerned about the whole process in Sacramento. It's a very difficult process for outsiders to understand and work through."

Murray said the bill fights for reasonable benefits student-athletes deserve within a collegiate sports atmosphere that generates millions of dollars. "I'm not for paying athletes ... I just want a certain amount of fairness," he said at an Oct. 28 summit on the topic, hosted by Stanford. "(My concern) is the manner in which the students are treated in comparison to what they do for the university.

"Chances are many of these athletes are more well-known than the Nobel Prize winners at their schools. ... We have this idea of amateur athletics, but it seems the only amateurs on campus are the athletes."

Murray said he doesn't want to require schools to follow the goals of his bill. He simply wants to remove NCAA rules that restrict schools from opting to do so.

Chase Lyman and James Bethea -- two Cal football players who testified in favor of the bill at an Assembly committee hearing last summer -- declined interview requests made through the Cal athletic department.

Student petitions

Hansen said many student-athletes, opposed to the bill because of its potential consequences, are circulating petitions. Santa Clara University Athletic Director Cheryl Levick said some athletes on her campus "are actually offended by it," and have begun a letter-writing campaign.

Even the bill's current caretaker, Assemblywoman Carol Liu, D-Pasadena, chairwoman of the Committee on Higher Education, doesn't know quite what to think.

On the one hand, she conceded, "Some of the issues that Sen. Murray brought to our attention are very legitimate." At the same time, she said, "I don't know how this bill got out of the Senate committee, quite frankly."

Many administrators agree. The Pac-10, for instance, supports providing athletes with year-round health insurance; currently they have no coverage over the summer, when they often are training for their sport.

Likewise, the Pac-10 is behind a proposal that would allow an athlete to transfer without loss of eligibility to another school if his coach leaves. Currently, football, basketball and hockey players must sit out a year after changing schools.

The NCAA recently passed legislation allowing student-athletes to take jobs unrelated to their sport.

Hansen said the Pac-10 presidents and chancellors have officially endorsed boosting scholarships to meet the actual cost of attendance, which typically is $2,000 to $3,000 more than NCAA grant-in-aid rules permit. By comparison, most schools oppose giving four-year scholarships, noting that many non-athletic scholarships are renewable on a yearly basis.

There is almost blanket opposition to allowing student-athletes to hire sports agents. University presidents are unwilling to cross that clear threshold of professionalism, and Hansen said coaches are universally against it.

"The agent would be telling the student-athlete to play this position or that position, or don't play because you've got a sore ankle, and on and on and on," Hansen said.

Even Huma would like to distance himself from this component of the bill. "That was something the senator put in there," he said. "We haven't formally opposed that point, but we haven't really addressed it, either."

The agent issue notwithstanding, the roadblocks put up by the other proposed changes are complicated but start with money.

Even some foes of SB 193 understand why others are skeptical when told the changes cost too much.

"Those of us who've seen the arms race in college athletics shouldn't be surprised that a small group of our students are arguing vigorously for their share of the pie," Stanford's Leland said. "The idea that everybody's making money except the athletes rings true for a lot of us."

Murray said his bill does not ask for too much. "There are stories about athletes who didn't have money for toilet paper, didn't have money for toothpaste," he said. "The idea that you really do get to live like a human being as an athlete is important."

Others argue that is more perception than reality. Most athletic departments do not make money, administrators say, and smaller schools, in particular, would be stretched.

"If we had all the money in the world, I would love to provide year-round health care and full scholarships to everybody," Santa Clara's Levick said. "We don't have sufficient resources."

Huma believes the changes could be funded through increased revenues generated by a new CBS television contract for basketball coverage that went into effect last year. The contract paid the NCAA $360 million last year and calls for yearly increases through 2013.

Huma proposes the approximately 17,000 football and men's and women's Division I basketball players on scholarship could be given an additional $3,000 per year at a total cost of $100 million.

"The money is no longer an excuse," Huma said.

NCAA spokesman Jeff Howard said 94 percent of the TV contract money is funneled back to schools, which use it to fund all of their sports programs.

Huma's math doesn't add up for other reasons, administrators say. Murray's bill was written primarily with football and basketball in mind, they say, and does not address other sports. It has Title IX gender-equity implications and becomes even more difficult to sort out when partial-scholarship athletes are factored in.

Gender equity

Most athletes in the so-called Olympic sports -- including swimming, track and field, field hockey -- receive partial aid. But by adding to the value of football scholarships, without a compensatory increase on the women's side, schools risk knocking gender-equity balance out of whack.

In other words, if 85 football players receive even an additional $2,000 in aid, that same total of $170,000 must be added to the value of women's scholarships to meet federal Title IX laws. Or it must be subtracted from other men's programs in order to keep the scales level.

"Because there's only so much money in the pot, if you give more to one person, that's less to another," said Levick, suggesting the lower-profile, nonrevenue sports will suffer. "That's the wrong message to send."

In fact, it's in conflict with the NCAA's mission, Howard said.

"The NCAA represents 360,000 student-athletes," he said, "not just a few in select sports."

California schools and conferences are working a two-pronged attack to derail SB 193: pushing proposed changes within the NCAA and fiercely lobbying all those involved in the state's legislative process.

Just in case, according to one Pac-10 source, former UCLA Athletic Director Pete Dalis has bent the ear of a fellow country club member and Hollywood movie producer who has the governor on his speed dial.

Opponents say their ideal scenario -- and perhaps the most likely outcome -- is a compromise in which the NCAA makes sufficient changes in its bylaws that lawmakers don't feel compelled to put their stamp on the issue.

"I'm not interested in forcing California out of the NCAA," Liu said. "Quite frankly, I think Sen. Murray is using (the bill) to force change."

Huma said he's heard promises from the NCAA for too long.

"If the NCAA was capable of reforming itself, it would have already done so," he said. "The NCAA has been completely stuck in one position. I think this bill is a great form of outside pressure. I think it has a chance to pass."

Liu acknowledged she isn't clear on how -- or when -- the NCAA might effect change.

"This is a body, apparently, that makes decisions slowly," she said. "I don't know what time in their life they're going to get around to it."

NCAA President Myles Brand, among the speakers at the Stanford summit, explained it's not within his grasp to simply rewrite the NCAA bylaws.

The 1,024 NCAA schools -- often with conflicting agendas, philosophies and financial resources -- set the rules. And they don't easily find consensus. But it's the only way the organization can function, said Chris Dawson, assistant commissioner for the Pac-10.

"The NCAA can't operate with any sense of competitive fairness with 50 different sets of legislative rules," she said.

The NCAA's 56-member management council -- which includes three Pac-10 representatives, just one of whom comes from a California school -- gets first crack at any proposed legislation. The council next convenes Sunday.

Final approval of any new NCAA bylaws comes from the Division I Board of Directors, an 18-member group of university presidents scheduled to meet April 19-20. Liu said her committee likely won't act on the bill until it sees how the NCAA responds in the spring.

If SB 193 becomes law, Huma believes, California schools will have the clout to negotiate their own TV contracts, and top athletes will flock to the state, seeking the added financial benefits and freedoms.

That's not the scene California administrators envision. They suggest a scaled-down, in-state sports landscape would struggle to keep coaches and athletes, could lose most TV coverage and wouldn't offer enough star-caliber athletes to even attract agents.

One source suggested if UCLA were no longer able to remain the primary tenant of the Rose Bowl stadium, that organizers of the century-old New Year's Day bowl would not be able to afford taking on that responsibility, and the game could disappear.

Huma stressed that his group's goal is not to destroy the NCAA or to get California ex-communicated from the organization. "If we thought that were the ultimate outcome, we wouldn't be supporting this bill," he said. "We don't think that's the case."

Instead, he's convinced the NCAA will blink.

And if that doesn't happen?

"I really don't know," Santa Clara's Levick said. "And I don't want to find out."