Harvard's football victory over rival Yale to close out the 2007 season completed a perfect 7-0 Ivy League mark and handed the Crimson its first league championship since 2004.

As sweet as it was to finish the season on top, Harvard senior fullback Noah Van Niel is familiar with ending things on a high note. Off the field in fact, Van Niel is – as the NCAA tag line suggests – going pro in something other than sports.

Van Niel wants to be an opera singer, a career goal kindled by his love of singing as a child. "As I got older,” he said, “I took it more seriously and toward the end of high school I thought, ‘Why not give the opera thing a try?’"

Along the way, Van Niel, a tenor, has sung just about every type of music, he said – from gospel to traditional choral music to musical theatre to pop. But he thinks his voice is best suited for opera.

"I really enjoy the challenge of it, and to me it's the highest form of singing," said Van Niel. "Singing opera requires the voice to be operating at its absolute highest. You have to have perfect technique, you've got to have decent range and you've got to be able to stay on pitch."

A top-flight performer also needs a good command of multiple languages – especially Italian, French, German and English. Most of the major operas are written in one of those four languages, said Van Niel, who’s an English major and an ESPN the Magazine second-team Academic All-American. But he’s also proficient in Italian, has taken Spanish and can sing in French and German.

The journey to the professional stage is a long one, according to Van Niel, but potentially lucrative at its highest levels. With today's professional singers being offered roles around the globe, the world literally could become his stage.

En route to making his dream a reality, Van Niel plans to attend graduate school before auditioning for programs and apprenticeships geared toward further developing his skills and helping him land roles. In addition to talent and skill, like any performing arts career, there's a lot of luck involved, Van Niel said. And like every other aspiring performer, he hopes to become established enough to support himself solely through singing.

Though he's been singing and playing football for years, if many of Van Niel's Crimson teammates didn't know just how serious he was about pursuing his singing career, they know now thanks to his appearance on the CBS Morning Show late last fall.

"All the guys have been supportive, caring and respectful," he said. "They are incredible guys -- incredible football players, but incredible people as well."

All the recent attention Van Niel's talent has garnered, including showcasing it on national television, has been incredible, too. Though there's some suspense in seeing whether Van Niel will ultimately command the center of the opera stage one day, one thing is certain: He doesn't want to be known as the football playing opera singer or the opera singing football player. Rather, he just wants to be respected whether he's decked out in pads or a tux.

"It's funny that I'm getting all this attention. I'm flattered and honored, but these are both things I love doing and whether people are writing about it or not, I'd be doing them," Van Niel. "I've been doing it for years. It's who I am."