1823 Legend has it that William Webb Ellis, a student at the Rugby School in England, illegally picked up a ball during a football/soccer game and ran with it, inadvertently leading to the development of the game which would be named after the school. They also added goalpost with a cross bar, with scoring coming by kicking the ball over the crossbar. Around the same time period, the six other major public schools in England were starting to standardize the rules of their game (soccer).

1846 Dr. Thomas Arnold, the head of Rugby School, made the first truly standardized rugby rules.

1855 Charles Goodyear's vulcanized rubber was used in the first manufactured soccer ball.

1860 Yale banned football in 1860 and Harvard did so the following year. The game at the time resembled the violent Mob Football from England.

1862 The Oneida Football Club was formed in Boston. The played a combined version of earlier Colonial and American game formats that included both kicking and carrying. The games were dubbed the "Boston Game".

1863 Eleven London football clubs/schools met at the Freemason's Tavern, forming The Football Association and began the first official standardization of soccer rules.

1867 In the late 1860’s football returned to college campuses. Yale, Princeton, Rutgers, and Brown played a kicking-based game akin to soccer, while Harvard played the “Boston Game” and Canadian schools played a running-based game all more akin to rugby.

1869 Princeton played at Rutgers in what is considered to be the first intercollegiate football/soccer game. At this time, virtually every school still had its own variations and rules. A home team’s rules were typically used for a game.

1871 The Rugby Football Union in England was formed to standardize rugby rules and remove some of the violence from the game.

1875 Harvard and Yale played for the first time. At this time Harvard was the lone American school using rugby-like rules, however as other schools played against or watched Harvard, they too began to shift away from the soccer-like rules.

1876 Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Columbia met to establish standardized rules. The results were very similar to the Rugby Football Union rules from England, except for the primary difference of the kicked goal was replaced with the touchdown.

1883 Points were added to the game of football, with field goals valued at five points, touchdowns at two points, and conversions after touchdowns at four points.

1892 Touchdown value was changed from two points to four and conversions after touchdowns value changed from four points to two.

1892 William "Pudge" Heffelfinger became the first “pro” football player when he was paid $500 to play in a game for the Allegheny Athletic Association against the Pittsburgh Athletic Club. By comparison, today’s top kickers are paid several million dollars a year, and players at other positions earn even significantly higher amounts.

1897 Touchdown value was changed from four points to five and conversions after touchdowns value changed from two points to one.

1902 Teams had to change ends of the field following a touchdown or field goal.

1904 FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) was founded in Paris. It is the international governing body of association football (soccer), which is the most popular kicking game in the large majority of countries throughout the world.

1904 Field goal value was changed from five points to four.

1909 Field goal value saw its final reduction when it was changed from four points to three.

1912 Touchdown value changed from five points to six; the starting point of all kickoffs was moved back from the 50 to the 40-yard line.