Ottawa Rough Rider
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| Founded | 1876 |
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| Folded | 1996 |
| Based in | Ottawa, Ontario, Canada |
| Home field | Frank Clair Stadium |
| Division | East Division |
| Colours | Red, white, and black |
| Grey Cup wins |
1925, 1926, 1940, 1951, 1960, 1968, 1969, 1973, 1976 |
| Uniform | |
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The Ottawa Rough Riders were a Canadian Football League team based in Ottawa, Ontario, founded in 1876. Formerly one of the oldest and longest lived professional sports teams in North America, the Rough Riders won the Grey Cup championship nine times. Their most dominant era was the 1960s and 1970s, a period in which they won five Grey Cups. The team's fortunes waned in the 1980s and 1990s and they ultimately ceased operations following the 1996 season. Five years later, a new CFL team known as the Ottawa Renegades was founded, though they suspended operations in 2006. The Ottawa Redblacks, who own the Rough Riders intellectual properties, joined the league in 2014.
The Ottawa Football Club was organized on Wednesday, September 20, 1876 where they won the first game they played on September 23 against the Aylmer Club at Jacques-Cartier Square. The team's colours were cerise, grey, and navy blue. The club adopted the name Ottawa Rough Riders on Friday, September 9, 1898 and changed its team colours to red and black. Since then, red and black have been Ottawa's traditional sporting colours. Although in later years the name was said to derive from logging, the team based its colours on Teddy Roosevelt's regiment in the Spanish–American War, which, with the date of the renaming, suggests that the name also comes from the war. The team changed its nickname to Ottawa Senators from 1925 to 1930.
For much of the team's history it played in the same league as the Saskatchewan Roughriders, confusing many, and also attracting general ridicule to the CFL for being a league with only eight or nine teams but two of them being named "rough riders" (spelled identically although configured differently, also, the Saskatchewan team's nickname has a well-documented derivation that has nothing to do with the Spanish–American War or logging). For a good period of time, both clubs also shared the same colours of red and black. The teams had historically belonged to separate leagues ('unions') until the CFL was formed in 1958. When the CFL was formed they were allowed to keep their long-standing names; Ottawa was frequently known as the "Eastern Riders" while Saskatchewan was sometimes called the "Western Riders." On four occasions, the two teams met in the Grey Cup.
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