Tom VanHaaren had three dreams growing up. He wanted to be a professional golfer, work for ESPN and be a cast member on Saturday Night Live.

The first dream was thwarted, because golf is hard. The third, well, I guess you can never say never. But VanHaaren is currently living one of his dreams, working as a national college football and recruiting reporter for ESPN.

The gig came after beginning his post-college career in advertising. VanHaaren soon realized that wasn’t the career for him and began covering Michigan for mgoblog.com, where he started with what he described as a “test run,” because he didn’t have a portfolio to prove his journalistic capabilities.

VanHaaren then turned that opportunity into a job with ESPN, and he’s been there ever since.