The CFL team announced his signing on Tuesday morning.<\/a><\/p>\n\u201c(The 2022 season) was the start, really,\u201d Klassen, who hails from Big River, reflected after his first practice as a second-time Roughrider.<\/p>\n
\u201cI came from a small town and played six-man football. I never had professional aspirations, but getting that chance to go to camp in 2022 opened the possibilities for me.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, guys are bigger, stronger, faster, so I realized that once I caught up in that regard, it was definitely a possibility. That helped me with my university career and getting through the rocky start to my pro career.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2022, Klassen repeated as a PFC all-star and was named the league\u2019s top offensive lineman. He was also a Canadian Junior Football League All-Canadian.<\/p>\n
After spending the next two seasons with the University of Regina Rams, Klassen was selected by the B.C. Lions in the fourth round (37th overall) of the 2025 CFL Canadian Draft.<\/p>\n
The 6-foot-4, 310-pounder missed the entire 2025 season after sustaining an injury at the Lions\u2019 training camp. The Roughriders reached out barely two weeks after he was released by B.C.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s always surreal to get an opportunity in the CFL, but it\u2019s even more so when it\u2019s your hometown team and the team you grew up cheering for,\u201d said Klassen, who has an education degree from the U of R.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very exciting, but also kind of humbling. A week ago, I didn\u2019t know if I was going to get another opportunity. I was preparing to go back to university to finish my university career (with the Rams).<\/p>\n
\u201cThen I got the call. It puts a lot of things in perspective. I\u2019m just glad that I\u2019ve stuck with it and I\u2019ve been patient with it throughout the process.\u201d<\/p>\n
Klassen is the 47th U of R Rams product to advance to the Roughriders and one of 36 Thunder alumni to have spent time with the Green and White.<\/p>\n
As well, he is only the second Roughrider to hail from Big River \u2014 following Larry Bird, who was the team\u2019s starting centre from 1971 to 1978. Bird entered the Plaza of Honour in 2002.<\/p>\n
Klassen is the only graduate of Big River Senior High School to join the Roughriders.<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember watching a lot of playoff and Grey Cup games with my dad \u2026 some that didn\u2019t go our way,\u201d Jason Klassen\u2019s 25-year-old son said with a chuckle.<\/p>\n
\u201cI definitely have fond memories of (following the Roughriders). They always say Saskatchewan\u2019s a football province. Up north, it\u2019s no different. You see flags, shirts \u2026 you name it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve definitely got green in the blood.\u201d<\/p>\n
That background was a bonus when the Roughriders approached Klassen.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s providing more depth at the O-line position \u2014 a Canadian boy, a local boy,\u201d Head Coach Corey Mace said. \u201cYou can never have too many of those.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe understood the player that he was when he came out (of university). He has some CFL experience as well. It made it really easy that he\u2019s a local guy. I\u2019m glad we could get him in here and get him into practice right away.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s probably going to be a little overwhelming for him, trying to learn everything from scratch, but coaches who are very familiar with him from his college days were very confident that he\u2019d be able to pick it up.\u201d<\/p>\n
It also helps that the Roughriders\u2019 offensive line includes two-time All-CFL selection Logan Ferland, who was one of Klassen\u2019s teammates with the Thunder in 2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cFootball keeps pulling us together,\u201d Klassen said. \u201cAs a younger guy and a new guy to the team, it\u2019s always nice to have that \u2018in\u2019 with one of the veterans \u2014 one of the star players on the team.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s one of the smartest guys in the playbook so, while it might annoy him for me to ask him a lot of questions, I\u2019m definitely going to pick his brain and use him as much as I can.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s awesome to have that connection and to show that the Thunder roots are still strong.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Connor Klassen was extremely green when he first joined the Saskatchewan Roughriders. A junior-eligible training-camp invitee and practice-roster…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":697022,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[437],"tags":[49,48,521,522,520,82],"class_list":["post-697021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cfl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canadian-football-league","tag-canadianfootballleague","tag-cfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=697021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/697022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=697021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=697021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=697021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}