On November 23, 1876, Reps from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Columbia fulfilled for the Massasoit Household lodge in Springfield, Massachusetts to standardize a new code of guidelines according to the rugby recreation very first launched to Harvard by McGill University in 1874. The principles have been based mostly mostly about the Rugby Football Union's code from England, however one particular critical variance was the alternative of the kicked target that has a touchdown as the key suggests of scoring (a transform that could later on take place in rugby by itself, favoring the attempt as the primary scoring event).

The history of American football is usually traced to early versions of rugby football and Affiliation football. Equally games have their origin in many kinds of football performed in the United Kingdom during the mid-19th century, wherein a football is kicked at a goal or kicked in excess of a line, which in turn have been based on the forms of English public university check here football games descending from medieval ball online games.