Originally Posted by Robert Goodman

No matter how old, you wouldn't remember goals on the goal line in Fed. NCAA had already moved the goals to the end line when Fed inherited them and started writing their own rules from that base. However, there was an early proposal in Fed to rename the goal line something like "score line" because the goals weren't on that line. And to rename "field of play" "scrimmage zone" because you could still play in the end zones but not scrimmage from there.

Rugby has kept the wording "field of play" too but eventually (much later than the Fed football proposal) adopted "playing area" to mean field of play + in-goal areas. "Field of play" goes way back to a time when the area beyond the goal lines was treated similarly to that beyond the side lines, and the ball belonged to whichever side touched it down there -- which action I guess they didn't count as "play".

Robert