Nearly two decades after they were teammates on an overachieving high school football team, rap music mogul Sean “P. Diddy” Combs and Gambino gangster Andrew Campos have each achieved riches and renown in their chosen fields.

In 1986, as seniors at Mount St. Michael Academy in the Bronx, they played on a football team with “commitment and attitude” that surprised the pundits and won a division title for the prestigious prep school. Campos was quarterback, Combs a defensive back.

Today, after following a path that has occasionally landed him in trouble with the law, P. Diddy rakes in a reported $300 million a year. He is CEO of Bad Boy Worldwide Entertainment, has his own line of clothing, operates myriad other companies, and will soon become a wireless service provider.

Campos has also had legal problems. Next month, he will be sentenced for his role in a mob fraud case. Campos, whose surname suggests Greek or Hispanic heritage (the Gambinos checked and determined his lineage was Italian before inducting him), has made his money primarily in the telecommunications industry. He was part of the largest consumer fraud in American history, one that cost unwary consumers a cool $750 million from related schemes involving phone sex and Internet porn.

Through it all, P. Diddy, 34, and Campos, 35, have remained close friends and confidantes, according to Mount St. Michael alumni, law enforcement sources, and official court records obtained by Gang Land.

On more than one occasion, sources say, Campos and other wiseguys have attended recording sessions as P. Diddy’s guests.

Last year, on the day Gang Land reported that Campos had been indicted in a “telephone cramming” scheme that grossed up to $600,000 a day, Gambino capo Gregory DePalma informed a Florida associate about the indictment by linking it to a prior trip that P. Diddy and Campos had made to the Sunshine State.

The February 12, 2004, conversation was picked up during a two-year FBI undercover investigation that led to racketeering and other charges against DePalma and 34 others, including three doctors, earlier this year.

“You know the guy you had there with P. Diddy? … He got pinched, you know,” DePalma said. He then read the names of “various Gambino family members and associates, including Andrew Campos,” assistant U.S. attorneys Edward O’Callahan and Christopher Conniff wrote in a report to Manhattan Federal Judge John Keenan.

On a previous trip to meet P. Diddy in Florida, sources said, Campos was accompanied by soldier Louis “Bo” Filipelli, who, along with DePalma, was indicted on racketeering charges in March. The New York mobsters never linked up with P. Diddy.

“It was supposed to be a social get-together, but it never came off,” a source said.

Two years ago, after Filipelli opened the Pleasant Avenue Cafe, an East Harlem restaurant at the corner of 118th Street, Campos called on his old teammate to show up and give his buddy Bo’s place a boost, a request that P. Diddy honored, according to sources on both sides of the law.

During that same period, between July and October 2003, according to the indictment, Filipelli, DePalma, and others were shaking down WKTU radio station for free ads for the restaurant, which closed its doors less than a year after they opened.

“I can’t say that he was there, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Puff is pretty easygoing about these things, and he often goes to Harlem,” a spokesman for P. Diddy, Rob Shuter, said. He added that P. Diddy has fond memories of Mount St. Michael and his high school buddies.

P. Diddy is not alleged, either in court papers or by law enforcement sources, to have engaged in any wrongdoing in any of his dealings with Campos.

When he pleaded guilty, Campos, who faces 27 months at sentencing and has agreed to pay a $300,000 fine (technically called a forfeiture), blanched when Judge Carol Amon informed him she could order him to make restitution of $100 million.

“I can never come anywhere near that. I’m having trouble paying this fine,” he said.

“And then,” Judge Amon said, “there’s the $100 special assessment.”

“That I can afford,” Campos chirped, meekly adding “yes” after Judge Amon sarcastically asked the millionaire mob scam artist if he were sure he would be able to handle the mandatory $100 fee.

During less complicated high school days, Campos was selected as the first team quarterback of the 1986 Daily News Bronx/Manhattan All-Star team. He ran his team’s wishbone offense like a pro, running for nine touchdowns and throwing for seven more, leading the Mountaineers to a 9-1 record. The team’s only loss was in the Catholic High School Football League championship game, by a touchdown.

P. Diddy, who earned his Puff nickname by puffing out his chest to make himself look stronger than he was, was a good defensive back but played more as a junior than he did as a senior, the team’s head coach for the last 26 years, Mario Valentini, recalled.

“What happened was that we had a kid who was a transfer from Canada who was a very good athlete, and I had to play the best athlete,” Mr. Valentini said, almost apologetically.

During the 1990s, the Mountaineers were CHSFL champs three times, but Mr. Valentini remembers that 1986 team as something special, even though they were one touchdown short in the championship game: “We had really good team chemistry, and it carried us a long way,” he said.

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Peter J. Gotti, younger son of the late Dapper Don – and beloved “Uncle Pete” to sister Victoria’s three Hotti Gottis on “Growing Up Gotti” – is now an official mob associate and member of brother Junior’s mob crew, according to Manhattan federal prosecutors.

This news comes as “Uncle Pete” has been getting more exposure as an, ahem, actor, on A&E’s so-called reality show in a variety of endeavors with his nephews, from helping them get dates to deep sea fishing and paintball fights.

Peter was elevated in mob status on word from FBI informants that he was his brother’s keeper “on the street, specifically collecting money from a number of different sources,” assistant U.S. attorneys Joon Kim and Jennifer Rodgers wrote, in explaining why the FBI planned to eavesdrop on Peter’s jailhouse conversations with Junior last year.

During a May 7, 2004, conversation between the brothers, Junior trashed several Gambino wiseguys, including consigliere Joseph Corozzo, for whom Junior has “no respect,” as well as mob defectors whom prosecutors plan to call at his upcoming trial for the attempted murder of the Guardian Angels founder, Curtis Sliwa.

In one ironic discussion, Junior said he had just received a message from the Bonanno boss, Joseph Massino, that his turncoat brother-in-law Salvatore Vitale was a “lying rat” who had implicated Junior in the “Bonnie and Clyde” murders of a husband and wife team that had robbed Gambino and Bonanno family social clubs in the early 1990s.

Junior denied allegations that he “was in the room with Vitale” and Massino when the murders of Thomas and Rosemarie Uva were discussed, saying he “took a walk with Vitale.”

Now that Massino has joined Vitale as a cooperating witness, it doesn’t really matter whether Junior was in the room with Massino or taking a walk with Vitale. The brothers-in-law have each told the feds that Junior took credit for the Uva murders, sources say.

This column and other news of organized crime will appear later today at www.ganglandnews.com.