Ihadn’t been to a CFL game in at least a decade, maybe two. The last time I sat in the Landsdowne Park stands in Ottawa, The Simpsons was still in its prime, and the Canadian Football League was still the punchline to one of its jokes: a league so quirky it had two teams called the Rough Riders.

How did that happen? Ottawa’s team adopted the name “Rough Riders” back in 1898 as a nod to their rough play nickname and for the loggers who drove timber down the Ottawa River. Saskatchewan, meanwhile, took on the “Roughriders” name in 1924, honouring a North West Mounted Police regiment nicknamed the Roughriders in the Spanish–American War. Oddly, the league never forced a change, so for decades both teams coexisted with nearly identical names.

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