It's that time of year again — the CFL starts a new regular season on Thursday in Saskatchewan. Roughriders' president and CEO Craig Reynolds believes it has been worth the wait.
"Let's be honest, winters in Saskatchewan are long," Reynolds said while chuckling on the SportsCage. "I'm lucky enough, I get to go to work at that beautiful stadium every single day. I'm sitting on a CFL conference call in my office, I look out at that stadium, it's snow-covered and I'm just like: 'I can hardly wait till we've got Riders fans back in here and we're playing meaningful football.' That happens on Thursday night."
The Riders host the Ottawa Redblacks at 7 p.m. on Thursday to kickoff the 2025 CFL regular season. Reynolds explained the three-down league's schedule-making process.
"They start sending you drafts and you provide feedback on it. In Saskatchewan, we know our fan base — they travel — and we greatly appreciate everybody who travels a long way to come to Regina for the football games. We have 50 percent of our fans travel from outside of Regina and we appreciate them immensely. Thursday nights are very, very tough for the people of Saskatchewan, we appreciate that and it's a challenge. It was very important to TSN on the television side of things," Reynolds recalled.
"When they presented us the schedule and they had us in the season opener on Thursday night, we thought this is the right place to kickoff the CFL season, in the heartland. For Thursday night, kicking off the season, that's a really cool thing and a really cool opportunity that doesn't come along very often. That's how it happens. It showed up on the first draft, from a Thursday perspective, it is challenging here to kickoff the entire season at home. It is pretty special."
In previous years, the CFL schedule was released in December, according to Justin Dunk from 3DowNation. This season, it was released on January 16.
"There are lots of drafts because it was a little bit delayed, you got to look at it from so many different perspectives. One of the most important things for us is the football side of things, days rest and marginal days rest. Does your opponent have more rest than you do? Those types of things," Reynolds said.
"We look at it intensely from a fan perspective and to kick it off Thursday, that's very special. After that, we get into a really nice cadence with a lot of Saturday games and a couple of Friday night games in July, which are special. Then we get to Sunday and Labour Day, it's mostly Saturdays and Friday nights after that. We feel really good about the schedule. It's a process, you involve the football guys and you get feedback from the entire organization.
CFL commissioner Stewart Johnston will be in Regina to kickoff the season and according to Reynolds, he has "a really packed agenda." Reynolds is confident in the Riders pulling out a victory when Johnston is in the Queen City but knows the Redblacks will be a hard team to beat.
"I think Ottawa is a good team — I think we know who I'm going to be picking to win," Reynolds said. "From a score perspective, think it could be high scoring early season you just don't know. Sometimes it's a bit of a defensive battle as the offences sort of figure themselves out. Sometimes it's an explosion back and forth. Let's go back and forth, it's going to be high-scoring.
The Green and White begin the regular season on Thursday. Catch the pre-game show with Teagan Witko, Justin Dunk and Wes Cates at 4 p.m. while Dave Thomas and Luc Mullinder have the game call at 7 p.m. You can hear everything on the 620 CKRM Co-operators Rider Broadcast Network.
