ROBERT J. GEOGHAN
President & CEO

When Bob Geoghan founded the Quarterback Club of Washington, D.C. in 1965, he had no idea what he was about to begin. The Quarterback Club is a non-profit, social sports organization specifically hosting Washington Redskins Luncheons during the football season. The highlight of each season is the popular Redskins Player-of-the-Year awards dinner held annually in late December. It was just the first event of many that would take him all over the country.

Nine years later, Mr. Geoghan founded Sports America, Inc., a sports event management and marketing firm, in 1974 with the first Capital Classic and he still serves as President/CEO. The Capital Classic has showcased the top local and national talent in Washington, D.C. ever since and is held each April at the MCI Center. This event paved the way for the McDonald’s All American High School Basketball Team, which was named in 1977. Its players quickly became the “Dream Team” of high school basketball, the All-American Team that every high school senior in the country aspires to make. This year, the McDonald's All American Game will celebrate its 27th anniversary at the Ford Center in Oklahoma City, following games at Cleveland's Gund Arena and New York's Madison Square Garden.

In 1977, Magic Johnson, Albert King, Gene Banks, Jeff Ruland, and Jeff Lamp were among the elite group of senior prep players selected to the East and West teams. These players and others performed in the 1977 Capital Classic in Landover, MD. The following year, the 1978 McDonald's All American Team was showcased for the first time in the inaugural McDonald's All American Game. The Game has become a year-long event including a three-month nomination process that allows for the top high school seniors in each state to be chosen as nominees to the Team. This process gave the McDonald’s Corporation a grass roots program, which enabled them to develop a relationship with the more than 23,000 high schools in the United States. Legendary UCLA coach John Wooden serves as the Chairman of the McDonald's All American Game and Coach Morgan Wootten of the famed DeMatha High School in Hyattsville, MD serves as the Chairman of the Selection Committee. In 2003, over 1,500 boys and 1,200 girls will be nominated and receive certificates from the McDonald's Corporation.

In the eighties, Mr. Geoghan began working more closely with McDonald's to expand its sports marketing division. His events included the McDonald’s Capital Gymnastics Invitational in 1980 and the McDonald’s Diving Classic, featuring male and female members of the United States Diving Olympic Team, in 1981. He managed the McDonald’s Gymnastics Medallist Tour through five US cities featuring the men’s and women’s gold and silver medalists from the 1984 Olympic Team. Mr. Geoghan also consulted with McDonald's on the building of the Olympic Swimming Pool in Los Angeles which was used in the 1984 Olympic Games and on the inaugural McDonald’s Open played at the MECCA Arena in Milwaukee, WI in 1987 with the NBA's Milwaukee Bucks and three international teams.

In 1987, Mr. Geoghan expanded into the college ranks, producing The Collegiate Legends Classic, which featured the University of North Carolina and UCLA alumni teams in a basketball exhibition game that was broadcast live on ABC-TV. His close friends Dean Smith and John Wooden coached their respective alumni teams with the proceeds benefiting the John & Nell Wooden scholarship foundation.

In 1983, he created a half-hour weekly television show “McDonald’s’ Teen Sportsmen” which was aired on ESPN. The show, co-produced by ProServ Television in Dallas, did features on different high school sports. It changed its name to Scholastic Sports America, which it was called until it went off the air in 2000.

Back on the football side, Mr. Geoghan founded the National Quarterback Club in 1985 with the creation of the National Quarterback Club Awards Dinner, which recognizes the top quarterbacks from the professional, collegiate and high school ranks as well as honoring the “the Quarterbacks” of industry, entertainment and government. The highlight of the evening features the induction ceremonies into the National Quarterback Hall of Fame. Most recently, he has honored the likes of Brett Favre, Rich Gannon and John Elway at the annual dinner.

When the Baltimore Ravens moved east to Maryland in 1996, he founded the Quarterback Club of Baltimore, a non-profit organization similar to the Quarterback Club of Washington. The highlight of each season is the Ravens Player-of-the-Year awards dinner held in December and televised by WMAR-TV with sports anchor Scott Garceau as the host. In the fall of 2002, he opened the Quarterback Club of Houston with the expansion Houston Texans.

In 1997, Mr. Geoghan created the Morgan Wootten Invitational basketball tournament to raise dollars for the Mid Atlantic Coalition on Donation and build national awareness for organ donation. The Invitational was created after his good friend, hall of fame high school coach Morgan Wootten, received a life-saving liver transplant in 1996. Each year this event features top high school basketball teams from across the country.

In his 35 years of work with Sports America and the Quarterback Club, Mr. Geoghan has raised nearly $5 million from his various events and promotions for local and national charities. Past beneficiaries have included: Ronald McDonald Children’s Charities, Children’s Miracle Network, Make-A-Wish Foundation, Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, the Leukemia society, Children’s National Medical Center, Joe Gibbs Youth for Tomorrow, the Don Shula Foundation for Breast Cancer Research, and the Ronald McDonald House.

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