NILES Go Blue? The University of Michigan battle cry is popular with many in the Niles area, but it hits a stop sign at 1205 S. 11th St., where John Dampeer operates his State Farm Insurance office. Dampeer's Good-Neighbor surroundings include a picture of former Notre Dame football coach Ara Parseghian and a poster depicting photos of a century's worth of Fightin' Irish football captains. Closer examination of the latter reveals that Dampeer isn't simply a fan. His mug is displayed for the year 1972, when Dampeer earned All-American status. Like most football linemen, the former offensive tackle didn't receive a great deal of recognition in college. But he managed to impress the one person who mattered most -- the former Susan Combs, a Sturgis native and a student at Saint Mary's College when the two first met. Today, they've been married 34 years and have two grown children. "I tell people I made a big mistake at Notre Dame. I fell in love with a girl from Michigan,'' he said. "I'm still here, with the gray (skies) instead of the sunshine.'' The sunshine would be Texas, where the 57-year-old Dampeer grew up. Born in Kermit, a West Texas town half the size of Niles, Dampeer recalled that his high school team his senior year was ranked in the state's top 5 but lost a season-ending game that would have propelled it into the playoffs for the state championship. The game Dampeer's team lost was played in the same stadium in Odessa that's depicted in the film "Friday Night Lights.'' "We had 15,000 to 16,000 people at that game,'' said Dampeer, a guard and defensive end in high school who made all-state on both offense and defense. "One had strong Notre Dame connections and wrote a letter (to ND). He said, 'You need to contact this guy.'æ" At the time, Dampeer knew nothing about the university and its football tradition. But he did know it had a strong academic program and, unlike a lot of universities, it didn't have separate dormitories for its athletes. "I liked that. I wanted to be able to mix with the other students ... to be a little more normalized,'' he said. Another perk was playing for Parseghian, who was so popular fans Lou Mumford Mum's the Word Lou Mumford is a Tribune columnist.