Mike Pegram, owner of the sports Web site Peegs.com, never foresaw his future career when he was growing up.

As a successful swimmer, he had competed for high-level high school teams. After graduating, Pegram went on to Indiana University on a swimming scholarship. At the time, IU had a Big 10 dynasty in swimming.

While he was at IU, he considered sports writing to be his hobby.

Now it is his only job.

As a Web designer, Pegram can inspire a lot of people with his story. At Thornton Fractional South High School, the newspaper publication does not have a Web site. As an amateur web designer, Pegram has shown that, with a little practice, everyone can operate a web site. Hopefully, this will inspire schools like T.F. South to get on the Web, and publish their newspaper on a Web site.

Pegram described his job to a group of high school sports journalists July 20. The speech was given at Indiana’s High School Journalism Institute, a journalism camp for high school students.

Pegram had an interesting start to his Web master career.

“My first Web site was a family site I designed just for fun,” said Pegram. "It had pictures of my daughter and son, the usual stuff."

This experience made Pegram realize just how easy it was to make Web sites other people would love to read. He changed his site to a more sports oriented one, focused mainly on IU basketball.

Pegram enjoyed participating in online sports forums. His favorite was the Indianapolis Star forum.

“It was a place where people could meet and just talk about sports,” Pegram said.

Over time, Pegram realized that what he really wanted was a site dedicated totally to Hoosiers basketball. Thanks to advice from some friends and correspondents, Pegram started his new site with a much better domain name. After a long process, Peg decided to name his new site Peegs.com, which happened to be his nickname.

Through advertisements and volunteer helpers, Peegs.com was able to get off to a running start. Pegram works out of his home on a regular computer with an internet connection and Web site publishing software.

In the early years of Peegs.com, a lot of money was made through advertising banners which paid three dollars for every 1,000 hits. With over a million hits per week, money was coming in regularly, and Pegram’s favorite hobby became his only job. Eventually, Pegram started his own web forum, where people could finally discuss IU basketball without any other topics.

When the “internet revolution” of the 1990’s slowed down, less money was coming into the Pegram household. Inside Indiana was Peegs.com’s main competition for IU news. With the financial problems he was having, Pegram decided to form a partnership with Inside Indiana.

At this point, most Web organizations were starting subscriptions, which means that a consumer would have to pay to use the services of the site. Pegram relented at first, hoping that he would be able to continue giving his readers free service. However, as a part of the Rivals.com network, which offered subscription services, Peegs.com became a premium site, but one that still had a lot of free information.

Today, Peegs.com is Pegram’s only job and source of income, and he wouldn’t have it any other way.

“The greatest part about my job is that I go to work as soon as I get up,” Pegram said. “I don’t need to worry about getting ready for work.”

Mike Pegram’s story truly shows how anyone can make their dreams come true. He was basically a sports enthusiast who had a sports Web site as a hobby. He found out that he could make money through Peegs.com, and he was more than happy.

Pegram is living the life he could only dream of, and that’s the true American Dream.