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The Ottawa Redblacks play their first game ever Saturday, at home…in Regina, Saskatchewan?

andrew bucholtz

One of the most interesting elements of this CFL season will be Ottawa's return to the league. The Redblacks (ALLCAPSby team preference, but not by ours) take the field for their first game Saturday (6 p.m. Eastern, TSN/ESPN3), and it's even a home game! Unfortunately for their fans in Ottawa, though, that "home game" is a 25-hour-drive across the country in Regina, Saskatchewan. That's thanks to the team's new field at TD Placenot being quite ready yet:

The RedBlacks, who won't have their TD Place home field available until July, will be the home team when they line up against the Saskatchewan Roughriders in their exhibition-season opener.

Ottawa will then play in Montreal the following weekend.

“In my mind, (Regina) is the epicentre of the CFL,” said RedBlacks president Jeff Hunt on Monday. “It's a great place to play our first game. The history of the teams adds a little intrigue as well.”

There's an obvious irony in this — given that the western Roughriders stubbornly refused to allow Ottawa to return to the CFL as the Rough Riders. But the idea of an exhibition showdown makes plenty of sense.

“It's a great thing for us and they're excited about it,” said Jeff Hunt. “When I talked to them about the idea, they were instantly enthused. It's certainly appropriate. The Roughrider (Rough Rider) history is certainly a factor.

“We were trying to do something creative. Given that we couldn't play at home, we looked at our options. It's a bit outside of the box. Maybe on a normalized basis, we'd have a home and home with Montreal. This might be the only time we ever play Saskatchewan in an exhibition game.”

The name history referred to there is why this team's called the Redblacks in the first place; the Saskatchewan Roughriders reportedly were allowed to veto the return of the Ottawa Rough Riders name. That's unfortunate, as the original Rough Riders had a great history from their 1876 founding to their 1996 demise. It doesn't mean things won't work out well for this new team, though; the failure of the last attempt to expand to Ottawa (the Renegades, which entered the league in 2002 and folded in 2006) wasn't about anything wrong with the market, but rather poor ownership (including the infamous Gliebermans), CFL rules that significantly limited their initial talent (a problematic approach), and a league that itself was facing financial struggles. None of those factors are in play this time around, and there's been plenty of excitement around everything that's happened so far in Ottawa, from the the expansion draft (which gave them much more talent than the Renegades had to start) to the jersey unveiling. Now, we'll see how things go for them when the rubber hits the road.

How is this Ottawa team going to do this year? Well, that's exceptionally tough to predict given that few of these guys have ever played together. There's a lot of talent on this squad, especially since they went out and brought in veteran quarterback Henry Burris, and there are enough promising Canadian veterans (including expansion draft pickups Keith Shologan and Patrick Lavoie as well as Jon Gott, acquired in a draft-day trade) that they could be good if they're able to come together quickly. That won't be easy, though, given both their lack of experience as a unit and that they have a rookie head coach in Rick Campbell; for all the talent in Ottawa, too, they're still largely building around players other teams considered expendable. If the Redblacks can gel quickly and show that their players were unjustly overlooked elsewhere, they could be a competitive team this year. There are lots of challenges ahead, though, including having to play their first "home" game on the road.