The Saskatchewan Roughriders open the 2025 Canadian Football League season on Thursday, June 5 on the gridiron at Mosaic Stadium in Regina. Another hopeful year begins for the faithful Green & White fans.
Gridiron can refer to a football field. In the late 1800s American football fields were marked in a grid pattern, not the familiar parallel yard lines we see on the turf today. From high up in the stands, the lines made the playing fields look like cooking gridirons.
Gridiron means a grate for broiling food. Since the 14th century English speakers have been putting meat on the gridiron to sear it to perfection for a scrumptious feast.
Gridiron is derived from the Middle English word gredil, which came from the Old French gredile, referring to grills for cooking. Its history lies with the Latin word craticula, the diminutive form of cratis, meaning wickerwork. Gridiron shares its word roots with griddle, a surface, pan, or appliance with a broad, usually flat area on which food is cooked directly over a heat source.
A gridiron can be a structure above the stage of a theater, from which scenery is hung and can be manipulated.
Something consisting of or covered with a network can be called a gridiron. The downtown area of most cities is a gridiron of streets. The interconnecting of power stations is known as a gridiron.
In ancient times a gridiron was used as an instrument of torture. In the third century AD the Roman Emperor Valerian persecuted Christians. At the time of Pope Sixtus II, Lawrence was one of the seven deacons of the Christian Church in Rome. Lawrence was in charge of distributing food to the poor and sick in the area. Because of this, he had access to the treasury, as limited as it was at that time. Emperor Valerian had Lawrence arrested and demanded that the treasures of the Church be used as ransom for his release. Tradition says that in response Lawrence called all the poor people of Rome to the prison courtyard and proclaimed that they were to the treasures of the Church. This was not well received, and the government officials were so angered that they had a great gridiron placed on hot coals and tied Lawrence to it. The ancient writings record that Lawrence responded to the torturers at one point and said, “I am cooked on this side; turn me over now.” Lawrence died in 258 AD and his feast day is observed on August 10. The famous explorer Jacques Cartier arrived at a great river in the new world on August 10, 1534 and called it St. Lawrence, after the saint.
In 2016 there was a British movie named The Gridiron. It was based on a true story about Derek who fails at everything he tries until he succeeds at forming an American football team in a land dominated by British football, rugby, cricket, and fish & chips. Will success lead to losing everything again?
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson starred in a 2006 movie entitled Gridiron Gang. The story is based on the Kilpatrick Mustangs during their 1990 season. Sean Porter (Dwayne Johnson) decides to build a football team of troubled teens so they can feel like they are part of something. He believes playing on the gridiron will teach them what it takes to be responsible, mature, and disciplined winners.
Fun fact: There are over 200 motion pictures that have been made using a gridiron as a backdrop.
What we in North America simply call football is known in many areas around the world as gridiron or American football. What we label as soccer is football in most of the world.
