Temple University Athletics
Photo by: Joseph V. Labolito/Temple University
Blaze Caponegro: A Father's Dream
9.17.13 | Football
by Kevin Rossi
Blaze Caponegro has always been a fighter. He has had no choice. In his fifth year as a linebacker for the Owls, Caponegro has had to battle through every kind of challenge thrown his way.
When Caponegro arrived on Temple's campus as a freshman prior to the 2009 football season, he was undersized for a linebacker. Coach Al Golden, who coached the Owls from 2006 to 2010 before leaving to coach at the University of Miami, and the coaching staff decided that the best plan for Caponegro was to redshirt him.
After his redshirt-freshman season – a season in which Caponegro was able to learn from those above him and develop a stronger football intelligence – he finally had his chance to shine and work himself into the rotation. But then the injuries hit.
First it was mononucleosis. Then, last year, it was a shoulder injury that required surgery. Caponegro battled through and, for the most part, kept himself on the field. He appeared in 21 of Temple's 24 games over the previous two years, recording 65 tackles in those seasons. Going into 2013, Caponegro had finally returned to full health.
"I better knock on wood, this is the first year that he's going into the season 100-percent healthy," said Blaze's father, Marc. "He has worked very hard in the offseason and during football camp, and I'm just happy because I know that's a tough step to accomplish and he has worked hard to get there."
Then this year, two weeks before the Owls' biggest game of the season, a match-up in South Bend, Ind. with the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame, Caponegro came down with a stomach virus. As an undersized linebacker listed at 6-foot-1 225-pounds on the team roster, Caponegro had worked so hard with the athletic trainers and the strength coaches to build muscle mass. The stomach virus nearly wiped out all of that hard work.
"When I first got here, Blaze wasn't very big. He was about 220 [pounds]," said defensive coordinator Phil Snow, who is in his first year at Temple. "We did a fantastic job, our strength coach, Jeremy [Scott], did a fantastic job. Now he's up to 230-ish. He got a stomach virus and lost 10 pounds [in a] week."
Caponegro made no excuses, though, and kept battling. He was not only on the field for Temple's opening game with Notre Dame but he thrived too, recording five tackles, 1.5 of which were for a loss. To get to this point, it has been a learning experience for Caponegro, a "journey" as he aptly calls it.
"I've grown a lot, and it's been a long journey," Caponegro said. "From freshman year redshirting, dealing with the ups and downs of that to growing older, working my way up through the regimen, becoming a special teams player to a player on the field on the defensive side of the ball. It's a long journey, and through injuries, you just have to keep fighting and keep persevering through all that stuff."
The journey is one that his father knows all about because, after all, he lived it too. The elder Caponegro attended Seton Hall in the early 1980s, where he starred on the football team as a linebacker. Choosing Seton Hall over other schools because of the proximity to home and his friends that were also attending, Marc was a starter on the team as a freshman.
Marc's journey, however, was ended abruptly. The school's administration stepped in and dropped the program in 1982 right before his senior season.
"The problem was that by my senior year they dropped the program," Marc said, looking back. "It was either finish out or transfer out with a year of eligibility. But [transferring] was too much to deal with, so I never had the opportunity."
Marc has now passed the Caponegro football legacy down to his two sons that are currently playing football at the collegiate level: Blaze at Temple and Blaze's younger brother, Connor, who is a sophomore linebacker at the University of Rhode Island. Connor appeared in ten games, starting five, while recording 30 tackles as a freshman last year. Blaze also has an older brother, Marc, and a younger sister, Gabrielle.
He is excited for the opportunity that Blaze has as a senior to leave his mark on Temple's program and continue the family legacy. Blaze and the Owls have been a perfect fit since day one.
"If you ever need someone who is an example of [what] Temple [represents], it would be Blaze," Marc said.
"I hope people look at him as a role model, as a mentor, he wasn't a prima donna, and he was a hard worker," he continued. "When you look at Blaze, he really represents Temple TUFF and the whole program that [Coach Golden] put together years ago and now Coach [Matt] Rhule looks to continue. He should be happy with that and so would I, honestly."
Blaze is excited to continue on with the family legacy and make his father proud. In fact, making his father proud is what is most important to him because his father has been there with him every step of the way through his football career.
"My dad has been there every step of the way from Pop Warner – when I was seven years old, he coached me – all the way up to college football," Blaze said. "He follows me and my younger brother, and he's there all the time. He never misses a game, always goes out to the away games for both of us. It means a lot because he's a pushing force for us through injuries, through tough times we always give him a call, and he always helps us out. He always gets us back on top."
He thought about it for a second more and then put simply, "He's a great mentor and I love him to death."
With two generations of Caponegros now with roots in the game of football, the pressure must be building on Blaze to continue the family legacy. He laughed and said, "I definitely have to keep it going."
For now, though, Caponegro is worried about playing football. This is his final season in the Cherry and White, and he wants to go out on top. Caponegro said, "This is the last go around for me, so I'm really excited."
His football pedigree will be a major advantage throughout the season. With the Owls' defensive coordinator in his first year, Caponegro's football pedigree will be put to the test with Coach Snow relying heavily on him to teach the younger players.
"This system we're running is drastically different, and the expectation of what we're asking them to learn is much greater than what they've done in the past," Coach Snow said. "It's going to take a year to teach it, but Blaze has learned it pretty fast because he's been around the game his whole life. You can tell that he has been."
Caponegro's hard work and quick learning has helped him earn one of the greatest Temple football honors: a single digit jersey. A tradition started by Coach Golden and then brought back Coach Rhule this season, the single digit jersey honors the Owls' nine toughest players. Caponegro will don No. 6 throughout his senior season.
"It's a really, really huge honor," Caponegro said. "As a freshman, we used to have this tradition, and we used to look up to those guys. You never think that you'd be in that spot of actually getting that single digit. Always looking up to those guys and working my way up, it was a rough road along the way to actually get it."
Coach Snow said that Caponegro was certainly deserving of the single digit jersey, but now it is time for those nine guys to go out and prove themselves.
"The big thing with the black jersey (the color of the defensive starter's practice jerseys) is the work ethic and the consistency that goes into getting one," Coach Snow said. "But still, those guys need to go out and play. To me, that will be the tale. Are they a black jersey? We'll find out. I like the way that these guys are working, but they need to go out and perform. This business is about performing."
Caponegro is ready for the challenge of living up to the tradition of the single digit jersey. It is an honor that is truly a testament to how far he has come in his five years at Temple.
"I just want to play extra hard for my teammates, for myself, and the coaches," he said. "[The coaches] have done a great job for us, preparing us, doing great things for us. I just want to play well for the young guys and let them know what kind of tradition they have to leave when they're upper classmen."
The challenge of living up to Temple's tradition is nothing compared to the challenge that Caponegro has faced just to get into his current position. He has battled through sickness and injury on a journey defined not by the bumps in the road but how he has overcome them.
The one constant in Caponegro's football career has been his father. There every step of the way through the ups and the downs, his father's love and mentorship has helped him through. His father's unfinished football dream, a dream stolen away by a school's administration, is now Blaze's to finish out. With a new coaching staff in place and a new legacy to carry on, Blaze Caponegro will mentor the young Temple Owls team the same way his father, Marc, has mentored him.
Blaze Caponegro has always been a fighter. He has had no choice. In his fifth year as a linebacker for the Owls, Caponegro has had to battle through every kind of challenge thrown his way.
When Caponegro arrived on Temple's campus as a freshman prior to the 2009 football season, he was undersized for a linebacker. Coach Al Golden, who coached the Owls from 2006 to 2010 before leaving to coach at the University of Miami, and the coaching staff decided that the best plan for Caponegro was to redshirt him.
After his redshirt-freshman season – a season in which Caponegro was able to learn from those above him and develop a stronger football intelligence – he finally had his chance to shine and work himself into the rotation. But then the injuries hit.
First it was mononucleosis. Then, last year, it was a shoulder injury that required surgery. Caponegro battled through and, for the most part, kept himself on the field. He appeared in 21 of Temple's 24 games over the previous two years, recording 65 tackles in those seasons. Going into 2013, Caponegro had finally returned to full health.
"I better knock on wood, this is the first year that he's going into the season 100-percent healthy," said Blaze's father, Marc. "He has worked very hard in the offseason and during football camp, and I'm just happy because I know that's a tough step to accomplish and he has worked hard to get there."
Then this year, two weeks before the Owls' biggest game of the season, a match-up in South Bend, Ind. with the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame, Caponegro came down with a stomach virus. As an undersized linebacker listed at 6-foot-1 225-pounds on the team roster, Caponegro had worked so hard with the athletic trainers and the strength coaches to build muscle mass. The stomach virus nearly wiped out all of that hard work.
"When I first got here, Blaze wasn't very big. He was about 220 [pounds]," said defensive coordinator Phil Snow, who is in his first year at Temple. "We did a fantastic job, our strength coach, Jeremy [Scott], did a fantastic job. Now he's up to 230-ish. He got a stomach virus and lost 10 pounds [in a] week."
Caponegro made no excuses, though, and kept battling. He was not only on the field for Temple's opening game with Notre Dame but he thrived too, recording five tackles, 1.5 of which were for a loss. To get to this point, it has been a learning experience for Caponegro, a "journey" as he aptly calls it.
"I've grown a lot, and it's been a long journey," Caponegro said. "From freshman year redshirting, dealing with the ups and downs of that to growing older, working my way up through the regimen, becoming a special teams player to a player on the field on the defensive side of the ball. It's a long journey, and through injuries, you just have to keep fighting and keep persevering through all that stuff."
The journey is one that his father knows all about because, after all, he lived it too. The elder Caponegro attended Seton Hall in the early 1980s, where he starred on the football team as a linebacker. Choosing Seton Hall over other schools because of the proximity to home and his friends that were also attending, Marc was a starter on the team as a freshman.
Marc's journey, however, was ended abruptly. The school's administration stepped in and dropped the program in 1982 right before his senior season.
"The problem was that by my senior year they dropped the program," Marc said, looking back. "It was either finish out or transfer out with a year of eligibility. But [transferring] was too much to deal with, so I never had the opportunity."
Marc has now passed the Caponegro football legacy down to his two sons that are currently playing football at the collegiate level: Blaze at Temple and Blaze's younger brother, Connor, who is a sophomore linebacker at the University of Rhode Island. Connor appeared in ten games, starting five, while recording 30 tackles as a freshman last year. Blaze also has an older brother, Marc, and a younger sister, Gabrielle.
He is excited for the opportunity that Blaze has as a senior to leave his mark on Temple's program and continue the family legacy. Blaze and the Owls have been a perfect fit since day one.
"If you ever need someone who is an example of [what] Temple [represents], it would be Blaze," Marc said.
"I hope people look at him as a role model, as a mentor, he wasn't a prima donna, and he was a hard worker," he continued. "When you look at Blaze, he really represents Temple TUFF and the whole program that [Coach Golden] put together years ago and now Coach [Matt] Rhule looks to continue. He should be happy with that and so would I, honestly."
Blaze is excited to continue on with the family legacy and make his father proud. In fact, making his father proud is what is most important to him because his father has been there with him every step of the way through his football career.
"My dad has been there every step of the way from Pop Warner – when I was seven years old, he coached me – all the way up to college football," Blaze said. "He follows me and my younger brother, and he's there all the time. He never misses a game, always goes out to the away games for both of us. It means a lot because he's a pushing force for us through injuries, through tough times we always give him a call, and he always helps us out. He always gets us back on top."
He thought about it for a second more and then put simply, "He's a great mentor and I love him to death."
With two generations of Caponegros now with roots in the game of football, the pressure must be building on Blaze to continue the family legacy. He laughed and said, "I definitely have to keep it going."
For now, though, Caponegro is worried about playing football. This is his final season in the Cherry and White, and he wants to go out on top. Caponegro said, "This is the last go around for me, so I'm really excited."
His football pedigree will be a major advantage throughout the season. With the Owls' defensive coordinator in his first year, Caponegro's football pedigree will be put to the test with Coach Snow relying heavily on him to teach the younger players.
"This system we're running is drastically different, and the expectation of what we're asking them to learn is much greater than what they've done in the past," Coach Snow said. "It's going to take a year to teach it, but Blaze has learned it pretty fast because he's been around the game his whole life. You can tell that he has been."
Caponegro's hard work and quick learning has helped him earn one of the greatest Temple football honors: a single digit jersey. A tradition started by Coach Golden and then brought back Coach Rhule this season, the single digit jersey honors the Owls' nine toughest players. Caponegro will don No. 6 throughout his senior season.
"It's a really, really huge honor," Caponegro said. "As a freshman, we used to have this tradition, and we used to look up to those guys. You never think that you'd be in that spot of actually getting that single digit. Always looking up to those guys and working my way up, it was a rough road along the way to actually get it."
Coach Snow said that Caponegro was certainly deserving of the single digit jersey, but now it is time for those nine guys to go out and prove themselves.
"The big thing with the black jersey (the color of the defensive starter's practice jerseys) is the work ethic and the consistency that goes into getting one," Coach Snow said. "But still, those guys need to go out and play. To me, that will be the tale. Are they a black jersey? We'll find out. I like the way that these guys are working, but they need to go out and perform. This business is about performing."
Caponegro is ready for the challenge of living up to the tradition of the single digit jersey. It is an honor that is truly a testament to how far he has come in his five years at Temple.
"I just want to play extra hard for my teammates, for myself, and the coaches," he said. "[The coaches] have done a great job for us, preparing us, doing great things for us. I just want to play well for the young guys and let them know what kind of tradition they have to leave when they're upper classmen."
The challenge of living up to Temple's tradition is nothing compared to the challenge that Caponegro has faced just to get into his current position. He has battled through sickness and injury on a journey defined not by the bumps in the road but how he has overcome them.
The one constant in Caponegro's football career has been his father. There every step of the way through the ups and the downs, his father's love and mentorship has helped him through. His father's unfinished football dream, a dream stolen away by a school's administration, is now Blaze's to finish out. With a new coaching staff in place and a new legacy to carry on, Blaze Caponegro will mentor the young Temple Owls team the same way his father, Marc, has mentored him.
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