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Modern football traces its origins back to the English sport of rugby, which in turn traces its origins to a rules-bending student named William Webb Ellis. As legend has it, Ellis picked up the ball and ran with it during a soccer match: Voila! Instant rugby. The earliest scoring system in a rugby-football hybrid played at American universities in the 19th century simply counted goals scored when teams kicked the ball through goalposts. It wasn't until Walter Camp of Yale started tackling the rules that the game began to take shape. Prior to the 1883 season, Camp, considered the founder of modern football, devised a complicated system in which each type of score a team made (touchdown, goal, etc.) was combined and measured against the combination of scores of its opponent. Confusion reigned, and Camp soon introduced a new scoring system that reflected the early game's emphasis on kicking: one point for a safety, two for a touchdown, four for a goal after a touchdown, and five for a field goal. In 1897 the value of a touchdown increased to 5 points, and the point after was lowered to one point. In 1912, a touchdown became 6 points and a field goal 3 points, where they remain to this day. In 1994, the
NFL adopted college football's two-point conversion. This excerpt from "The Origins and Development of Professional Football, 1890 - 1920" offers a detailed look at football's earliest years.
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