As it stands now, the list stands at a solid dozen.

Hugh Campbell — the legendary high school athlete in San Jose, California, receiver at Washington State University, then with the Saskatchewan Roughriders that went on to become a legendary coach with the Edmonton Eskimos and then the face of the franchise for a generation — will enter the Edmonton Sports Hall of Fame on June 12. It marks his 12th hall of fame induction and his second this year. No big deal.

“I don’t dwell on that,” Campbell, 76, said from his home in Idaho. “Collectively, I’m proud of being remembered in a good way in so many different places.”

Already a member of the Canadian Football Hall of Fame (2000), Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame (2009) and the Alberta Sports Hall of Fame (1997), Campbell said he’d seen pictures of athletes on the walls of Edmonton’s city hall over the years but didn’t know the details.

“I thought they’d just randomly picked pictures, but I guess that’s what this one is,” he said.

In a lengthy chat with CFL.ca, Campbell reminisced over his 26 years spent with the Eskimos as coach, then GM and president, his coaching tactics and his impact on the CFL today.

CFL.ca: When you look back on the five-in-a-row Esks teams, what sticks with you the most?

Hugh Campbell: When I was living it, when it was happening, I was so focused and busy that I didn’t think about how special it was. I thought about how to keep everybody going to do it again and again..

This might not sound very modest, but as the years have gone by, I look back at it and go, ‘That was really special.’ I say that collectively for all of us that were involved. I’m saying for the players and even the fans, but the players, the board of directors and everybody that just kept moving on and trying to always improve the team.

We never talked about being as good as we were the year before. We talked about improving the team. Football’s a very quickly evolving sport, not only in the strategies, but also the expected career time of the players is shorter than say basketball or hockey where there’s less serious injuries. You’re always looking at three, four, maybe five players that need to be replaced every year. That was the least joyful part of it, was having to make changes. But just looking at it, academically I guess, you knew that you had to keep growing. You had to keep getting better and improving. I guess a shorter answer to your question, looking back on it, I realize it’s quite significant.

CFL.ca Do you think the CFL will ever see a dynasty like that again?

HC: I would never say never about anything in sports. Just watching what happens in the NFL and the CFL…it’s really hard, just the psychology of getting a team to be productive again a year after. You’re wining and dining people and banquets, (you’re being) talked about and then even the fans are saying can you do it again or are you going to have a team as good as last year instead of it’s a whole new season, independent of everything in the past. Each year’s team is a different team, so you’ve got to keep after it.

CFL.ca: The salary cap changes things too, in terms of what you could offer players.

HC: We lost a few guys. It’s way more of a challenge now probably, that’s probably true but we did lose some guys. We knew, at some point everybody feels like they should be the highest paid at their position in the league because they’ve won two Grey Cups in a row. We just kept preaching it was a team thing and we couldn’t win without them. But at the same time, if anyone got way out of line with anyone else salary-wise, that’ll destroy a team way more quickly than losing one guy a year. You’re going to have to (lose players). Even back then we felt we’d have to lose someone so they know we have a limit.

CFL.ca: You had a lot of talent at a lot of positions, but everyone thinks of your quarterbacks first. How were you able to manage and develop guys like Tom Wilkinson, Warren Moon and Matt Dunigan at the same time and get the most out of them?

HC: At the quarterback position, you need to appreciate how important the position is, but at the same time realize that that’s a position that turns over more slowly, but where you grow with people coming in.

Again, the six years we went to the Grey Cup in a row we started three different quarterbacks in the Grey Cup and we had Bruce Lemmerman, you didn’t mention him but he was a very, very good football player. Tom Wilkinson was a very excellent football player. Tom’s leadership stood out so much. Then Warren came along. I told Warren before he signed that if he signed with us I envisioned that his first year would be a learning year and then that he would play a lot lot more after that. Even in his first year I said, ‘You’re going to play quite a bit, but it’ll be that Tom Wilkinson is the starter and you’ll go in and learn as much as you can, as quick as you can, when you can.’

It worked out that in the second year that he was there they played just about a half each in every game instead of saying we’ll see how it goes or whatever. I reserved the right to do whatever I thought gave us the best chance to win and I thought the best chance to win was to have them face one type of quarterback the first half and then another type the second half.

I think it’s something that I had as a coach that probably didn’t get mentioned much because it didn’t seem that important, was that I had the confidence to do what I thought was best, rather than what everyone else thought was best.

Sometimes I think coaches get hung up because, ‘Oh, they’ll kill me if I do this and it doesn’t work.’ The media, and I don’t say this in an angry way it’s a natural thing, the media very much wants to say, ‘Well, who’s going to be the starting quarterback?’ And the second guy goes in and does well they say, ‘He has a big decision to make next week.’ My feeling was I always had the team thinking. I’ll do the deciding who’s in there. You just do the playing when the guy’s in there, make each of them look so good that it’s a difficult decision for me who’s going to play. That’s just exactly what happened.

CFL.ca: Was it hard to get the quarterbacks on board with that?

HC: They didn’t have a choice, really. But they were good. For how great Warren was going to be, he could have been a real pain in the rear as a rookie. Instead, he was glad to be playing quarterback. The NFL was talking about him playing as a defensive back or a wide receiver or something. This is nothing against Warren, but he wouldn’t have made it as a defensive back. He was a quarterback.

And I’m proud that I saw it and I’m proud of the job that the coaches and the other players did to bring the best out of Warren, that he made it to play 19 or 20 years, total.

The other thing is to adjust to the quarterback later on. Having guys like Tracy Ham or Matt Dunigan is a lot different than having Bruce Lemmerman or Tom Wilkinson. You kind of grow and use the hand that’s dealt to you to the best of your ability.

CFL.ca: Do you think that could work today with quarterbacks?

HC: I do. I think it could and as a matter of fact I think it’ll come back a little bit because quarterbacks are getting hurt and that ruins your team if you’re a one quarterback guy. I think that no matter how many teams you have in a league there are never enough quarterbacks to go around. That’s because there can only be a few that are the best ones. So you think you don’t have (a great one) because you don’t have the very best quarterback. I think a way to work with that is to have two that you think are the best and deal with it. It’s tough deal with the salary cap nowadays because you’re going to pay a guy and if you had two (great) quarterbacks, someone else will say, ‘Whichever one they don’t use I’ll make him the highest paid guy in the league and have him as my quarterback.’

One of the things that helped the Seahawks win a Super bowl is that (Russell Wilson) was being paid as a rookie. They signed him with the idea of him being a third-string or a backup QB. That happened to us in Edmonton. We had Ricky Ray, who was backing up Jason Maas and all of a sudden Ricky Ray was our starter and it gave us two extra-good players on the team, because Ricky didn’t want to sign. He wanted to go try the NFL and that kind of gave us some extra dough to put at other positions.

CFL.ca: What’s it like all of these years later seeing Ricky still playing in the league and Jason transitioning into the Esks’ coach?

HC: I liked Jason out of Oregon. One of the Oregon coaches that we believed in said that he was so smart. He said that he’d be a great quarterback to have up in Canada in this league, even if he was a backup, that he would help your club. I didn’t necessarily picture him coaching in Canada until later in his career (in 2012) when he went and was an assistant coach when Ricky went to Toronto and Jason went there as a coach. That’s when I realized then for sure he’d be a head coach sometime in Canada, it’d just be a matter of time.

CFL.ca: What was watching the Grey Cup game like for you and your family last year, with a kid of yours on each side? (Note: Hugh’s son Rick Campbell, of course, coaches the REDBLACKS, and Hugh’s daughter Molly, is the communications and digital media manager for the Stampeders; a bonus fun fact, Hugh’s nephew, Max Campbell, is the community relations and communications coordinator for the Stamps as well.)

HC: It was really fun and it was somewhat relaxing to know we had one on each side. We were able to be happy either way. I was particularly thrilled because both of them do such a good job for their teams.

CFL.ca: Your bio for the Edmonton Sports Hall of Fame mentions your volunteer work and that you had words added to the Alberta license to recognize and prevent abuse. How did that come about?

HC: I was asked by I think it was Jan Reimer, who was the mayor of Edmonton (from 1989 to 1995). She was at least one of the people that were (working with the Alberta Council of Women’s Shelters) and they were in general trying to (raise awareness on) abuse to women and asked if I would take a leadership role there.

It came to my attention that in the state of Oregon which isn’t where i lived, but I’d just heard about it and had some people follow up on it, they included a phrase in the marriage license that each party had to agree to or sign that they read it…it was something to the effect that each party had a right to their own lives or something and that abuse was not acceptable.

What I did, during a talk at a breakfast that they had…I mentioned that at this breakfast in a speech and there were some (politicians) there. They went back and they did some work on it and sometimes it takes years to get something through. And this thing they did it and they talked to everybody about it and it was kind of in the media that I’d said this. They passed it within a matter of weeks and it became part of the Alberta Marriage license. That started a good relationship with the Eskimos and the women’s shelter.

CFL.ca: Not a lot of coaches or sports executives were thinking that way at that time.

HC: I saw it as a deal that particularly sports could have an impact because there’s a lot of, not that there were a lot of abusers in sports, but that the sports guys were macho enough that when they talk like that it would have more of an impact than maybe somebody in a different walk of life.

CFL.ca: You’ll be inducted on June 12th. Do you get back to Edmonton much?

HC: I haven’t in recent years. When I retired (in 2006), I thought we’d be going there a lot more. We had a condo and we thought we’d hang onto it and we did for a few years but then the kids started spreading out.

We sold the condo in Edmonton in the last couple of years and we haven’t been there, but we’re not trying to stay away. We have lots of very close friends, particularly on the (Eskimos) board of directors and then the alumni players, there are people that I’m very close to and of course keep in touch with, but some too, not as much as I wish I could have. It’ll be meaningful to go back and see some people and visit.

CFL.ca: After all that time and all of the success you had there, Edmonton must hold a special place in your heart.

HC: It was great for us. There was a certain spirit in the community. The business people were very aggressive toward Edmonton, that it should have whatever any other city had in the way of a culture and in the way of sports entertainment particularly. I liked the attitude that those people had.

Then for kids, it was a healthy environment and for our family there was good sport. The Edmonton Oilers were fun to watch and the Trappers were fun to watch. So it was all good. The city has a great we-can-do-it attitude