1876 in Sports - American Football

American Football

College championship

• College football national championship – Yale Bulldogs

Events

• 23 November — representatives of Harvard Crimson, Yale Bulldogs, Princeton Tigers and Columbia Lions meet at the Massasoit House in Springfield, Massachusetts to standardise a new code of rules based on the Canadian rugby game first introduced to Harvard by Canada's McGill University in 1874. The rules are based largely on the English Rugby Football Union's code, though one important difference is the introduction of the touchdown as the primary means of scoring instead of the field goal (a change that will later occur in rugby football itself). Three of the schools (Harvard, Columbia and Princeton) form an Intercollegiate Football Association as a result of the meeting. Yale will join in 1879.
• Walter Camp enrolls at Yale University and will become perhaps the most important figure in college football history.