Robert Kent Gooch

Bobby Gooch

Gooch in 1912
Virginia Cavaliers
Position	Quarterback
Class	Graduate
Personal information
Born:	(1893-09-26)September 26, 1893 Roanoke, Virginia, US
Died:	May 22, 1982(1982-05-22) (aged 88)
Career history
College	Virginia (1912–1914)
Career highlights and awards
SAIAA championship (1914) All-Southern (1914)

Robert Kent Gooch (September 26, 1893 – May 22, 1982) was an American football player and track athlete. Gooch was a quarterback for the Virginia Cavaliers football team of the University of Virginia. He was named a Rhodes Scholar, but the First World War interrupted his studies.^[1] During the war, Gooch served with the American Ambulance Corps with the French forces on the Somme front, and was awarded the Croix de Guerre.^[2] He is the namesake of the Robert Kent Gooch Scholarship, for second and third-year college students who have a record of outstanding academic achievement and a record of outstanding service to others.^[3] For many years Gooch was a political science professor at UVA, writing several books.^[4] He is buried at the University of Virginia Cemetery. A named professorship of political science, the Robert Kent Gooch Professor of Politics, was established in his honor at the university, with Larry Sabato the incumbent as of 2018.