Just imagine 28 years old and General Manager of a professional baseball club valued by Forbes Magazine at $323M. I'm in my mid-twenties and I can tell you that the closest I've been and will likely ever be to a GM position is the one I have in various fantasy sports leagues. Wouldn't it be nice if professional teams actually considered someone's virtual GM prowess when it came to hiring for a real position? I would think at the very least that you could use someone's fantasy league experience as a way to weed out some of the weaker candidates and disqualify a potential candidate for the job. For example, if a job candidate drafted Joey Harrington as their starting fantasy QB they should be eliminated from the running regardless of how strong their resume is. Here are some of my notable Virtual GM accomplishments:

• GM of "Picture Me Rollin" - reigning 5-time champion in a 12-team keeper-based hockey pool
• Leading a fantasy football team to a 15-1 regular season record · Having the foresight to draft Johan Santana, Felix Hernandez, Jorge Cantu, Carl Crawford & Mark Teixeria before they became stars
• Drafting Marek Zidlicky before anyone knew how to pronounce his name
• Taking an expansion hockey team and leading them to a championship within 3 years
• Parlaying Mike Comrie through a series of trades into Joe Sakic.
  

	The Texas Rangers have made Jon Daniels the youngest ever MLB GM. (Source: AP)

As sports fans we've all dreamt of being 'GM for a day' and making trades and unloading underachievers or running a draft and selecting prospects that might actually fit the clubs' needs and have a chance to make an impact. In those daydreams we never take into account the other tasks GMs have to contend with like dealing with player agents, disruptive personalities and team chemistry. So as easy as the position may seem from the outside there is a lot more that goes with the job than meets the eye, including the heavy public scrutiny GMs are faced with which is magnified all the more by a GM who's younger than half the roster he assembles. Jon Daniels will face those pressures if the Rangers falter just as Theo Epstein feels those pressures (magnified albeit) as the GM of the Boston Red Sox.

The hiring certainly seems justified now, three years after the fact. All Epstein has done during his tenure is help assemble a group of idiots that broke an 86-year old curse that plagued the team, the fans and a nation of fans that wondered if they would ever see a World Series victory in their lifetime. Before Epstein was able to prove his mettle, there were serious questions about the Red Sox's mentally stability in entrusting one of sports most cherished franchises to an Ivy League grad who worked his way up through the San Diego Padres organization. With his contract expiring shortly Epstein will be a hotly sought after GM if the Red Sox choose to not re-sign him. It's hard to ignore his astute assessment for talent; he signed Keith Foulke, Curt Schilling, David Ortiz (when he was a nobody in Minnesota) and Mark Bellhorn and traded for Dave Roberts, Orlando Cabrera and Doug Mientkiewicz - all key contributors to the Red Sox 2004 World Series victory.

It seems as though the Red Sox hiring of Epstein has kicked off a bit of a trend. Since then Rangers hired Daniels and the LA Dodgers hired Billy Beane's Oakland A's disciple Paul DePodesta (31 yrs old) to run the club. Even hockey has followed suit. In 2003 the Toronto Maple Leafs hired John Ferguson Jr. in the hopes that he would lead the team to their long sought after championship. At 36, Ferguson became the youngest ever GM in NHL history.

	Getting to spend three months working in Italy = dream job. (Source: Olympic.org)

Fellow FourSport.ca writer Charles Achampong has also just recently landed a pretty impressive gig at an early stage of his career. Charles will join the Vancouver Organizing Committee where he'll be part of the buildup for the 2010 Winter Olympic Games. Specifically he'll be working on identifying and planning out all the non-competitive venues for the games such as the Olympic Village, the Volunteer training centre and the Media Accreditation Centre (you know I'm gonna get an all-access pass). In addition Charles will be heading off to Italy in January as part of a three-month secondment for the 2006 Torino Winter Olympics where he'll be working in the Olympic Village. That's one sweet job! I kinda think that the next article you see from Charles is going to feel like one of those performances from a SNL cast member who's become too big for the show and is just about ready to leave full-time to pursue movies.

Excuse me while I try to brush up my resume.