Saskatchewan Roughriders

Team information

• Inaugural season: 1910
• Home field: Mosaic Stadium, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada
• Owners: Community owned
• Team colors: Green and white

Overview

The Saskatchewan Roughriders is a Canadian Football League (CFL) team based in Regina, Saskatchewan. The team was formed in 1910 and adopted its province-wide identity in the late 1940s. The Roughriders is the oldest football team in western Canada and one of the oldest continually operating teams in the league. The franchise has been accused of hijacking its name from a former team in Ottawa and for several decades was one of two CFL teams using a variation of the name Roughriders. For most of the early twentieth century, the team was the most successful western franchise in Canadian football and one of the few that could attempt to challenge the supremacy of teams from the east. However, since the CFL was formed in the 1950s, Saskatchewan has won only four Grey Cups, although one of those victories—the 1989 championship—is considered to be the greatest Grey Cup game ever played.

History

Rugby-style football, an early form of modern football based on English rugby, first became popular in eastern Canada in the 1860s and 1870s. As easterners were lured west by economic opportunities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, they brought the sport with them. Soon, rugby football teams began to pop up across the nation’s western provinces. In Saskatchewan, the Regina Rugby Club was established in September 1910, and within a year, a five-team league was formed with clubs also based in Alberta and Manitoba.

The Regina Rugby Club was the class of this early league. After finishing with a losing record in 1910, the team finished in first place for the next twenty-two seasons and enjoyed a seven-year undefeated streak against other western clubs during the 1920s. Eastern football dominated the landscape of the early twentieth century, with teams from Ontario routinely playing each other for the Grey Cup—the trophy presented to the nation’s best football team. The Regina Rugby Club began playing exhibition matches against eastern powers in the 1910s, and by the 1920s, the team was playing for the Grey Cup. From 1923–1934, Regina played in seven Grey Cup matches, including five in a row from 1928–1932, albeit with little success.

Among the eastern football clubs at the time was a team based in Ottawa called the Rough Riders. The club had been formed in the 1870s and adopted the name Rough Riders in 1898, most likely as a tribute to the famed US cavalry regiment led by future president Theodore Roosevelt. In 1924, Ottawa renamed itself the Senators, and the Regina Football Club jumped at the chance to use its old nickname. Regina used a one-word version of the name—Roughriders—and apparently wanted the name for a different reason. According to the most accepted theory, the name referred to the officers who broke the wild horses used by the North-West Mounted Police, a force based in Regina. In 1931, Ottawa switched back to using the Rough Riders name. At the time, Regina and Ottawa were in two different leagues, but once the two leagues merged in 1958 to form the CFL, it made for the sometimes awkward matchup of Roughriders vs. Rough Riders. In 1996, the Ottawa Rough Riders folded, making Saskatchewan the CFL’s exclusive Roughriders franchise. When Ottawa was awarded a new team in the 2010s, Saskatchewan officials blocked the franchise from using its old name. Instead, the Ottawa team was named the Redblacks after the Rough Riders’ traditional colors.

Coincidentally, red and black were also the colors the Regina Roughriders had used since 1912. In 1948, a franchise official was looking to replace the team’s worn old uniforms when he came across some inexpensive green and white ones at a surplus store in Chicago, Illinois. The official purchased the uniforms, and from that time on, green and white became the roughriders’ official colors. That same year, club management decided to capitalize on the team’s enthusiastic province-wide fanbase by rebranding the franchise as the Saskatchewan Roughriders. From the start, Saskatchewan’s logo included stalks of wheat, a nod to the region’s farming heritage. In 1985, the Roughriders’ logo was changed to a white “S” set against a green field. On both sides were two stalks of wheat on a black border. The logo received a makeover in 2016 but kept the same basic design.

The Roughriders achieved a measure of success in the early 1950s, making the Grey Cup game in 1951; however, the latter half of the decade would be marred by tragedy when four Roughriders’ All-Stars were killed in a plane crash in 1956. For the next several years, the team struggled, posting a franchise-worst 1–15 record in 1959 and missing the playoffs until 1962. That season marked the start of a turnaround that culminated in the Roughriders’ first Grey Cup win in 1966. The team would make it back to four more championship games in the next decade, only to lose each time.

From the late 1970s into the mid-1980s, Saskatchewan accumulated losses on the field and debts off of it. With the club in financial trouble, team management staged a telethon in 1987 to keep the franchise solvent. The effort was successful, and just two years later, the team rewarded its fanbase with the most memorable moment in Roughriders history. Despite finishing the 1989 regular season at 9–9, Saskatchewan rode a string of upsets in the playoffs to make the Grey Cup game against the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. After falling behind 20–8, the Roughriders bounced back to take a 40–33 lead into the final minutes. Hamilton tied the game on a touchdown pass with just over 40 seconds left, but the Roughriders drove down into field goal position to set up Dave Ridgway’s game-winning kick as time expired. Saskatchewan’s victory is considered to be the greatest game in Grey Cup history.

Despite making the Grey Cup in 1997, the 1990s were another lean period for the Roughriders. However, the situation began to change in the 2000s as Saskatchewan made the playoffs each year from 2002–2010 and won the Grey Cup in 2007. The Roughriders made back-to-back Grey Cups in 2009 and 2010, only to lose in heartbreaking fashion each time. In 2013, the team was again on the winning end of a Grey Cup championship, beating Hamilton in a rematch of the 1989 classic. The win was the franchise’s fourth championship to go with its fifteenth Grey Cup losses, the most in Grey Cup history. In 2016, the team moved into Mosaic Stadium, a 40,000-capacity facility that replaced Taylor Field, the Roughriders’ home since the 1930s.

Notable players

More than thirty former players, coaches, or team officials associated with the Roughriders have earned a spot in the Canadian Football Hall of Fame. The franchise has retired eight jersey numbers in its history. Four of those honor the four players—Mel Becket, Mario DeMarco, Ray Syrnyk, and Gordon Sturtridge—killed in the plane crash in 1956. Also among the team’s retired jerseys are the two Hall of Famers who powered the Roughriders’ success in the late 1960s and 1970s. Quarterback Ron Lancaster played for Saskatchewan from 1963–1978 and still holds the franchise record for career passing yards with 46,710 and passing touchdowns with 299. Joining Lancaster in the backfield was running back George Reed, who was the MVP of Saskatchewan’s first Grey Cup in 1966. Reed played with the Roughriders from 1963–1975 and is not only the team’s all-time leading rusher with 16,116 yards but is second in CFL history. His 134 rushing touchdowns are another CFL record. Reed was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1979, while Lancaster was inducted in1982.

The team’s hero in the 1989 Grey Cup game, Dave Ridgway, has also had his jersey retired and became a member of the Hall of Fame in 2003. Ridgway, who played with Saskatchewan from 1982–1995, is the all-time franchise leader in field goals with 574 and points scored with 2,374. Another member of the 1989 team was offensive lineman Roger Aldag, a Roughrider from 1976–1992. Aldag was elected to the Hall of Fame in 2002 and has also had his jersey retired.

The franchise’s all-time leading receivers, Ray Elgaard and Don Narcisse, were teammates for much of the late 1980s and 1990s, and both were eventually enshrined in the Hall of Fame. Elgaard played for the Roughriders from 1983–1996 and finished his career with 13,189 receiving yards. He made the Hall of Fame in 2002. From 1987–1999, Narcisse complied 12,336 receiving yards and has been a Hall of Famer since 2010. Among more modern players, quarterback Darian Durant played in Saskatchewan from 2006–2016 and is the only Roughrider quarterback to have won two Grey Cups. Durant also stands second on the franchise passing list with 28,507 career yards.

Bibliography

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“Grey Cup Winners.” Canadian Football Hall of Fame, 2020, www.cfhof.ca/grey-cup-winners/. Accessed 4 Apr. 2020.

Harrison, Doug. “Greatest Grey Cup Games.” CBC/Radio-Canada, 26 Nov. 2009, www.cbc.ca/sports/football/greatest-grey-cup-games-1.775313. Accessed 4 Apr. 2020.

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Scanlan, Wayne. “Rough Riders Name Off Limits for Ottawa.” National Post, 14 Aug. 2011, nationalpost.com/sports/football/cfl/rough-riders-name-off-limits-for-ottawa. Accessed 4 Apr. 2020.

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Vanstone, Rob. 100 Things Roughriders Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die. Triumph Books, 2019.