College athletics could be on the verge of a historic change, and Pennsylvania might be one of the states leading the charge.

California passed groundbreaking legislation Monday called the Fair Pay to Play Act, which will allow college student-athletes in that state to be able to make money off their image or likeness.

Tuesday, a pair of Pennsylvania state legislators announced they are working on a bill that will closely resemble the California act. If the bill comes to fruition and passes, college athletes across the state would be able to get paid for endorsements, something currently prohibited by the NCAA.

“Athletes are forced to give up their rights and economic freedom while the colleges make hundreds of millions of dollars off of their talent and likeness,” state Rep. Dan Miller, D-Allegheny, said in a press release from Harrisburg.

“This bill would help to balance the scales by allowing them to sign endorsements, earn compensation, and hire agents to represent their interests in exchange for the work they do, and the benefit provided to the college.”

Miller and Rep. Ed Gainey, D-Allegheny, are working on the Pennsylvania legislation.

“Our student-athletes give their blood, sweat and tears to a sport they love, while colleges, universities and corporations reap the financial benefits of their work,” Gainey said in the statement.

“If a college football head coach can earn $4.8 million for coaching ‘amateur student-athletes,’ and if corporations can earn billions of dollars using the players’ names and faces, then how is it not fair for them to earn some sort of financial compensation? The chances of a professional contract and thus a payout for all of their hard work and pain are tiny, and we owe it to them to level the playing field.”

The legislation was announced at 1:02 p.m. Tuesday. By happenstance, just minutes earlier, Penn State football coach James Franklin was asked what he thought about California passing its act and if he would like to see something similar in Pennsylvania.

Franklin didn’t endorse the idea, but he didn’t criticize it either, instead choosing to stay more middle of the road.

“Obviously there’s a lot going on about this right now, and obviously our administration here at Penn State, as well as the Big Ten Conference, is all following this closely, and we’re going to have to continue to follow it closely, and we’re going to have to learn and we’re going to have to evolve,” Franklin said.

“So I think everybody is very aware of it, and we’ll continue to track and obviously come up with some plans that are specific to Penn State, as well as plans for the Big Ten Conference.”

One prominent member of the Big Ten, Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith, said Tuesday that he is against the Fair Pay to Play Act.

The legislation does not mean student-athletes can receive extra pay from their schools, but they can receive money from outside sources such as local businesses or video game makers that wish to use their likeness.

“My concern with the California bill — which is all the way wide open with monetizing your name and your likeness — is it moves slightly towards pay-for-play,” Smith said, according to ESPN. “And it’s very difficult for us — the practitioners in this space — to figure out how do you regulate it.

“How do you ensure that the unscrupulous bad actors do not enter that space and ultimately create an unlevel playing field? One of our principles is try to create rules and regulations to try and achieve fair play.”

The NCAA is concerned about the Fair Pay to Play legislation and has indicated that California schools would not be eligible for NCAA tournaments or championships if they allow their student-athletes to receive outside money.

If, for instance, Pennsylvania passes a bill and Penn State football players were to receive money for their likeness from outside sources, it could mean a situation where the Lions would not be eligible to participate in NCAA championships.

As a Sports Illustrated story pointed out Tuesday, there’s even concern that California schools which allow student-athletes to be paid could be banned from the NCAA. That’s obviously a worst-case scenario, but certainly a major issue that would need to be ironed out as legislation continues in various states.

There has been growing support from current and former college athletes for the Fair Pay to Play Act, with many people championing the idea of college student-athletes getting paid.

NBA star LeBron James has been at the forefront of the cause in California. He skipped college basketball and went straight to the NBA, but he knows that if he had gone to college, his school would have made a lot of money off him.

“For sure I would have been one of those kids if I would have went off to Ohio State or if I went off to any one of these big-time colleges where pretty much that 23 jersey would have got sold all over the place without my name on the back,” James told Sports Illustrated.

“Coming from just me and my mom, we didn’t have anything,” James added. “We wouldn’t have been able to benefit at all from it. And the university would’ve been able to capitalize on everything that I would’ve been there for that year or two or whatever.”