LOVINGTON — At 8:30 a.m. Jessica Tarin was already at work on a customer's nails at Collage, a combination beauty salon and gift shop on Main Street in this small, oil-patch town in southeastern New Mexico.

She went about her filing, clipping and buffing like normal except that on this day last week she was wearing a Brian Urlacher T-shirt in Lovington Wildcat blue.

In the next room, Kathy Smith sported a gray Urlacher football camp shirt as she attended to a customer's hair. Tobi Friedrich, who runs the salon, came to work in a Chicago Bears Urlacher shirt.

Lovington is Urlacher country. The 6-4, 258-pound All Pro linebacker for the Bears grew up here and helped the Wildcats win a state high school football title in 1995 before becoming an All-America defensive back at the University of New Mexico.

Urlacher is Tarin's friend.

"We used to call him `Sissy,' " she said without looking up from the nails at hand. "He's the age of my younger sister Schylar, who's a nurse now in Amarillo. Brian used to come over to our house in 1992 and 1993. He was a little, scrawny pipsqueak then. He was so quiet we called him `Sissy.' "

Since Jan. 21, when the Bears won their way into the Super Bowl, Tarin, 34, has been urging people to wear Urlacher and/or Bears' colors. Chicago faces the Indianapolis Colts on Sunday in Miami.

Tarin has a stash of 10 Urlacher shirts in a salon cabinet for customers who feel inclined to slip into one while they're in the shop.

Like many people in Lovington, which is near the Texas border, Tarin was raised a Dallas Cowboys fan. But she's been a Brian Urlacher backer since his high school days.

"I didn't know squat about the Bears until they drafted Brian (out of UNM in 2000)," she said. "Now, I'm trying to do anything I can to get people to support the Bears."

Tarin said Lovington is super-proud of its hometown hero.

"I think he's an awesome role model," she said. "It's just fun to see someone you know on TV who is that talented. He is just so full of excitement when he plays that you can't help but get excited yourself."

Someone quipped that probably nobody calls Urlacher "Sissy" anymore.

Tarin paused in her work and looked up.

"My sister does," she said.

Just do it

Lovington covers about five square miles in Lea County. It's the county seat. The courthouse is at the northeast corner of Main and Central streets, just opposite the Main Street Cafe.

Nearby are the Lea Theater, which shows free movies on Wednesday but charges admission on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, and the Lea County Museum, located in a building that was a hotel from 1918 to 1969.

"The hotel had the first flush toilets in Lovington," museum director Jim Harris said. "People used to come in here just to see them."

These days, major attractions in Lovington include high school sports and the World's Greatest Lizard Race, the latter taking place during the town's Fourth of July celebration. Last year, 16 lizards competed.

About 10,000 people live in Lovington. Some work for county government, some work for the public schools or make a living in agriculture. But Lovington is an oil and gas town, and many of its residents work in the industry or in jobs related to it.

It's not an especially prosperous place. A drive along Main Street reveals a boarded-up Burger King and some abandoned cafes, service stations and stores scattered among operating businesses.

"Lovington has not had its share of the oil revenues," museum director Harris said. "The oil companies have their offices in Hobbs."

According to the 2000 census, Lovington's per capita income was $12,752. The median income for a household in 2000 was $26,458 and the median income for a family then was $30,064.

Urlacher's nine-year contract with the Bears is for $56.65 million, and that's not counting what he makes from promotional deals with companies such as Nike.

But Tarin said if any folks begrudge Urlacher his pro football success and the wealth that goes with it, they know better than to say so.

For the record, Lovington thinks of Urlacher as that nice kid, the amazingly talented athlete who didn't get a big head when he made the big time, the local boy who continues to support and return to his hometown even though he no longer has any family here.

"He could have walked away and never looked back, but he didn't," Tarin said.

Instead, Urlacher has put $40,000 into a weight-training facility for Lovington High, paid for refurbishing locker rooms at the high school gym and worked out an agreement with Nike to provide shoes for all the high school's varsity athletes for several years.

In 2004 he initiated an annual benefit basketball game pitting pro athletes such as himself against a team of Lovington All Stars. Proceeds from the game, played in late May at the Lovington High gym, go to the school.

And in 2005, Urlacher went into business in Lovington, kicking in with partners to open Brian Urlacher Cross Country, a used-car dealership, on South Main Street.

"For someone who lives in Chicago, he keeps quite a presence here," said Jim Templeman, a Lovington lawyer.

It's a fact. You can't miss it.

Catty-cornered across Main from Urlacher's car lot, a large mural of the football star in Lovington High colors dominates the street-side wall of an abandoned Gibson's Discount Center. Nike had it painted there.

The words on the mural read, "This is Lovington. Just do it."

The Bear Pack

For drawing power, the buffet at Lovington's Pioneer Steak House must rival high school football, Urlacher's benefit basketball game and the World's Greatest Lizard Race.

During lunchtime this past Thursday, the Pioneer was jammed with people lined up for the beef brisket, black-eyed peas, barbecue chicken and ribs.

Scott Karger was there.

Karger, 37, is a golf coach and assistant basketball coach at Lovington High. He teaches history, too.

Back in the late Õ80s, Karger and his younger brother, Bryce, were basketball stars at Lovington High. Scott was not yet a coach at the school when Urlacher was an athlete there in the Õ90s. He got to know Urlacher from a spectator's perspective, watching him compete in football, basketball and track.

"You always knew he was special, but I don't think we knew the NFL was in his future," he said. "I remember talking to him when he was a freshman at UNM, and he was excited he had made the traveling squad. He was on the kickoff team as a freshman, and that was big.

"He could have played basketball at UNM, too. He was so tough and strong in the post."

That's how Karger knew Urlacher then. He knows him even better now because Karger's brother, Bryce, is Urlacher's agent.

That makes Karger part of what could be called the Lovington Bear Pack, a group of people, privileged, via their association with Bryce Karger, to hang out with Urlacher before and after Bears' games, to sample the Urlacher lifestyle these days.

Others in the group include David Campbell, president of the First National Bank in Lovington, and Patrick Homer, a Lovington physician.

"The life Brian leads now is nothing like the one he had here," Scott Karger said.

He said Urlacher's home is in Lake Forest, near the Bears' training facility outside of Chicago. Hanging out with Urlacher there, Karger said, usually involves some kind of contest with the ultracompetitive linebacker.

It might be Wiffle ball in Urlacher's huge backyard, or pingpong, or air hockey or bowling.

"It gets heated," Karger said. "The language gets heated, trash talking all the time. And Brian is the king of scare, always hiding and jumping out at us.

"But I wouldn't trade it for anything. It's so much fun."

Karger recalled a time early in Urlacher's pro career when he was in a party that accompanied the football player to Gibsons Steak House, a popular Chicago restaurant. Michael Jordan, the former Chicago Bulls basketball great, was there.

"Jordan says to Brian, `Brian, what's up?' and Brian says, `M.J., what's going on?' " Karger said. "This is when it hit me: This is no ordinary deal. Every time we get on the plane to go home, we look at each other and one of us says, `Back to reality.' "

Big game, big heart

In Lovington High Athletics Director Chief Bridgforth's office, there's an inscribed photo of Urlacher pounding Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Favre.

The inscription, signed by Urlacher, reads, "Chief, you will never beat me in pingpong."

"We played hundreds of games of pingpong when he was a senior," Bridgforth, 48, said. "Well, more than 200 anyway. We'd play as many as seven or eight games a day upstairs in the gym. I tell him I was three games ahead of him when we finished."

Back when Urlacher was at the school, Bridgforth was the head basketball coach.

"He was outstanding his senior year, 25 points and 15 rebounds a game," Bridgforth said of Urlacher. "He had a 30-inch vertical (jump), plus his size and strength. He was a monster."

He figures if it's up to Urlacher, the Bears will win the Super Bowl.

"Winning is what Brian is all about," he said. "He would trade all his individual awards to win the Super Bowl. For Brian, this is a business trip."

Lovington High head football coach Jaime Quiñones, 45, sees it the same way.

Quiñones, a 1979 graduate of Albuquerque's Menaul School, was the Lovington Wildcats secondary and strength coach in 1995 when Urlacher and his teammates went 14-0, finishing up with a win over Silver City for the state Class AAA football championship.

"The one play of Brian's I remember most happened in the championship game against Silver City," Qui¤ones said. "Brian is playing free safety and a receiver is running behind him. Brian jumps way up and with one hand and intercepts the ball. It kind of turned the game around. That's Brian. He stands out in big games."

Bank president Campbell is among those from Lovington going to the Super Bowl.

"I almost feel compelled to go," he said. "The Monday after the Bears beat the Saints, people were calling me up saying, `You're going aren't you?' I've had people, including a five-star general and a professional wrestler, calling me to see if I can get them tickets."

But Bridgforth, Quiñones and Karger will see the game on TV in Lovington. Coaching and teaching commitments make it impossible for them to make the trip.

"It's killing me, but this is my job," Karger said.

He'll watch the game with his wife, Lisa, 39, a junior high teacher in Lovington, and their sons, Brannon, 8, and J.T., 6.

Like those of many young boys in Lovington, Brannon and J.T.'s respective rooms are temples devoted to Urlacher, filled with posters and other memorabilia.

"I feel funny, nervous, because this is the Bears' first time in the Super Bowl for 21 years, and I want Brian to win it," Brannon said. He gets contemplative for a moment.

"But I feel happy for the Colts, too, because of (Colts quarterback) Peyton Manning," he said. "I like his commercials."

Brannon's little brother, J.T., has a special reason to back Urlacher and the Bears in the Super Bowl.

J.T., who has a rare heart ailment, had just come off some surgery last summer when he and Brannon attended Urlacher's football camp in Albuquerque.

During the awards portion of the camp, Urlacher gave the first-ever Heart Award, for the kid who had showed the most heart, to J.T.

Lisa Karger said it seems Urlacher enjoys doing things like that as much as accomplishing something special on the playing field.

Lovington lawyer Templeman, Lisa's father, said Urlacher's character is an asset to his hometown.

"He doesn't showboat on the field," he said. "He pays homage to his teammates. He's not strung out on drugs. He's not an embarrassment. We are as proud of that as we are of his playing ability."

Top of the heap

Varsity basketball practice at the Lovington gym is winding down as three players - junior post Daniel Lester, 17; sophomore post Ralph Cooper, 16; and senior post Joel Aranda, 17 - seek some relief from shin splints by soaking their legs in the gym whirlpool.

None of them knows Brian Urlacher personally, but they all benefit from his contributions to the school's athletic facilities and all of them will be watching him in the Super Bowl.

"I think he worked hard to get there and he deserves it," Cooper said.

It's Lester, however, who nails the real importance of a Brian Urlacher to a small, dusty, getting-by-the-best-way-it-can New Mexico town.

"He gives us hope," Lester said. "He proves it's possible for people like us - even though we're from a little team and a little school - to make it to the top."