Follow
The Saskatchewan Roughriders are a professional Canadian football team based in Regina, Saskatchewan. The Roughriders play in the West Division of the Canadian Football League (CFL).
The Roughriders were founded in 1910 as the Regina Rugby Club. Although they were not the first team to play football in Western Canada, the club has maintained an unbroken organizational continuity since their founding. The Roughriders are the third-oldest professional gridiron football team in existence today (only the Arizona Cardinals and Toronto Argonauts are older), and one of the oldest professional sports teams still in existence in North America. Of these teams, the Roughriders are both the oldest still in existence that continuously has been based in Western Canada as well as the oldest in North America to continuously have been based west of St. Louis, Missouri. They are also the continent's oldest community-owned professional sports franchise, older than every American professional sports team outside baseball other than the aforementioned Cardinals (who, unlike the Roughriders, no longer play in their original city) and older than every Canadian sports team outside football except the Montreal Canadiens, who were founded about nine months prior to the Roughriders. The team changed their name to the Regina Roughriders from the Regina Rugby Club in 1924 and finally to the current moniker in 1946. The Roughriders have played their home games at Mosaic Stadium at Taylor Field since 1936.
The team draws fans from across Saskatchewan and Canada who are affectionately known as the Rider Nation. The Roughriders play in the smallest market in the CFL, and the second-smallest major-league market in North America (only Green Bay, Wisconsin, is smaller). They have finished first in the Western Division seven times and have won the Western championship a record 28 times. They have played in the championship game 19 times and won four Grey Cups.
The team has had 20 players inducted into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame. The Riders' biggest rival is the Winnipeg Blue Bombers; games between the two are often sold out before the beginning of the season. The Roughriders Football Club and the city of Regina have hosted the Grey Cup three times, including a Roughrider win in the 101st Grey Cup. In July 2012, the Province of Saskatchewan announced that the Roughriders will have a new stadium completed in time for the 2017 season.