Tag Archives: Paul Darragh

08.24.26
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Paul Darragh: Another Temple captain gone too soon

Had the BOT went through with its plans a decade ago, we’d all be tailgating at an on-campus stadium that might have looked like this. (Photo from the TempleAllSports twitter account)

Tailgating isn’t what it used to be.

For years, we’d have a solid crew of tailgaters who would reliably show up every single season.

Something happened since and, for the last three or so years, the normal “crew” would be missing one or two guys who we lost to passing away.

Some of them were real shocks, like John Belli.

Paul Darragh definitely was in that category, too.

Darragh wasn’t a regular but just an occasional visitor. He didn’t make it every Saturday, but he would be there every other year, and we’d see him pretty often on Cherry and White Day.

That’s the last time I saw him at a C and W game a couple of years ago. I won’t be seeing him again because he passed away at the all-too-young age of 63. I mentioned to him that I saw him make an interception on an old Youtube video.

Temple season ticket holders mingle with players and coaches on Saturday.

“I never had an interception, Mike,” Paul said.

I took his email and sent him the video and he got a kick out of it and thanked me for it.

“I completely forgot about it,” Paul wrote back.

Great guy.

Darragh might have been a regular tailgater except he had things to do on most Saturdays, like being the head coach at Bloomsburg University. He was named head coach on Dec. 6, 2013 and promptly went 10-2 his first season.

He was also an assistant coach at many places including Temple.

In his playing career, he was a three year starter at linebacker and captain of the 1983 Owls, Bruce Arians’ first Temple team. He also started the last two seasons of Wayne Hardin’s career.

In his post-coaching career, Darragh and most of us tailgaters would have returned to campus and enjoyed many Saturdays at the alma mater had the university stuck to its plans and built an on-campus stadium. Now it looks like there will never be an on-campus stadium as the area (15th and Norris) set aside was held for a few years and now is used by the university for other things. It’s amazing to me that the university spent $1 million for a rendering of the stadium by Moody Architecture yet an artificial intelligence tool (see above) did one for free that looks only about a million times better.

Maybe one day there will be a stadium on campus, but that day will probably be a lot closer to 50 years from now than five or 10. Of course, that talk could be revived if the Owls open the season with wins over Rhode Island and Penn State. It would take something that big to revive the project.

Doubtful that any of us will be around to see it but if it ever gets built, a tradition that included guys like Darragh will be the figurative foundation.