Not one decade.

Not two.

Not even three.

But four decades with the Stampeders.

Not many people have a career that long – let alone have it with a single team – but legendary equipment manager George Hopkins has done just that.

For his efforts with the Calgary Sport and Entertainment Corporation, he was presented with a 40-year Service Award on March 20.

“It was nice,” said Hopkins. “It was a great recognition of, I don’t want to say time served, but just to recognize the fact that I’ve been around for a while.

“I started in May of 1972, so add a few more years on to the total.”

46 years with the Stamps and counting.

That’s a long time ago.

The top song in ’72 was The First Time Ever I saw Your Face by Robert Flack, the top film was the Francis Ford Coppola classic The Godfather, and the top-rated show on the tube was All In The Family.

During his many years with the Red and White, Hopkins – known around McMahon Stadium as Geo – has been a part of the good times and the bad.

“I’ve got lots of favourite memories,” Hopkins said. “Grey Cups are always nice, but on the other end of the spectrum, I remember the Save the Stamps campaign. Basically for all intents and purposes, we had a telethon to get season tickets in as it looked like we might fold. I’ve seen both ends of it, but you try to remember the good times a lot more fondly than the rest of it.”

After a long, grueling campaign, the off-season brings with it some down time for the club, including Hopkins and his equipment team.

However, it doesn’t take long for him to start getting antsy.

“The offseason is nice for the first month where you can relax and get something that resembles seven hours of sleep a night, but it gets a little boring after a while,” he explained. “There’s always enough little things to keep you busy, but now it’s where it’s starting to amp up and you can feel it.”

Preparations have started to ramp up in anticipation of players arriving in May for the beginning of rookie camp and training camp.

And Hopkins couldn’t be happier – or busier.

“Right now, it almost seems like I’m a receiving department for Amazon,” joked Hopkins. “Things really start to come in as April 1 is our, more or less, confirmed deadline for most things.

“Right now we’re getting two FedEx and three UPS trucks full of stuff every day. We’re receiving, sorting, and starting to create laundry bags, helmets and shoulder pads for players. It goes from being an echo chamber of a locker-room to being pretty full and pretty vibrant in the space of three weeks.”