Lake Ronkonkoma's Craig Geoghan competing on Hallmark's reality show 'Finding Mr. Christmas'

A former Long Island football star, now a Los Angeles working actor, is one of 10 Hallmark-handsome men vying for a role in one of the cable channel’s signature holiday movies on the reality-TV competition "Finding Mr. Christmas." Season 2 premieres Monday at 8 p.m.

And whether or not he wins, says Lake Ronkonkoma-raised Craig Geoghan, being on the show proved a gift.

"This was like a crash course in acting, almost like a boot camp for acting," says Geoghan (pronounced GAY-gun, "like President Reagan but with a G"), 34, who was born in Smithtown. The show domiciles 10 actors in a holiday-themed house where they live together and compete in what Hallmark calls "festive physical challenges [and] emotional acting scenes." As in many reality shows, that combination of bunking together while being competitors "created a really cool bond" among the men, Geoghan says.

Before in Utah, where the show filmed this past spring, he says, host Jonathan Bennett and "the casting directors and producers and so on were all saying how the best part about this show is the community you build. And I didn't not believe them, but I didn't expect it to be as true as it ultimately became. It's cool how close I've gotten with not only the other nine guys but Jonathan, Melissa [Peterman, the lead judge], even Pete [Thiengtrong, a show publicist] on this phone call. ... I think I have a bunch of friends who will be around for a really long time."

Even before decamping to L.A. in 2017 — where his work has included parts on Hulu’s "How I Met Your Father," Fox’s "Rescue: HI-Surf" and other projects, plus a starring role in Carrie Underwood’s 2022 "Ghost Story" music video — Geoghan has been in the spotlight.

At age 12, for the Newsday section "Kidsday," he was one of three young reporters who interviewed Giants quarterback Kerry Collins. Going on to himself quarterback at Sachem North High School, Geoghan was named to the All-Long Island football team in 2008 and 2009, having made second team in 2007. He set school records for career passing yards (2,146), season passing yards (1,105), career completions (264) and touchdowns in a season (11) and in a career (18). All but one still stand, he says he believes.

He went on to play for Nassau Community College and then for Stony Brook University, where he received a bachelor's degree in health science with a concentration in disability studies.

"In high school, we had two managers on the football team, Tim and Mike, and they both had special needs," he recalls. "And they both liked me a lot and I took a liking of them. We became friends and it kind of made me realize that I have a gift, for lack of a better word, for empathizing with people with disabilities. ... They're just different in the same way you and I are different from each other. And that really took me down that path."

Indeed, in his other job as a personal trainer, he once worked for several months with a special-needs client. "She would come in, work out, and, yeah, she had Down syndrome, but it didn't stop her from working harder than just about anybody else in the gym."

The son of retired union carpenter Keith Geoghan and former real-estate agent Janet Ellermann Geoghan, Craig is his family's third generation to play Division I football, after his father and grandfather. His sole sibling, older sister Karyn Geoghan Bishop, ran Division I track and field at the University of Rhode Island.

And what’s his best Christmas memory? "I remember bringing home our first family dog, Nala," a German shepherd mix named for a character in the film "The Lion King," he says. "I was 7 years old. It was the holiday season and it was just the four of us in the car — my parents, me and Karyn. ... I remember bringing Nala home in the car and just being stoked. ... She was about 75, 80 pounds when fully grown, but she was the gentlest, sweetest dog ever."