La La Palooza

Twenty years ago, when Ice Cube was wearing Kings hats, he wrote a rap about an idyllic day in Los Angeles. In It Was a Good Day he plays a pickup game at the park and watches the Lakers beat the SuperSonics (now the Thunder) and spots the Goodyear blimp in the night sky. I ask him something many locals have wondered, whether that day was real. "It was based on a lot of real days," he says. "It was a portfolio of good days put together in one package." As he reflects on his favorite sports day, he starts chronicling the 11 championships the Lakers have won in his lifetime but stops himself. No, the best day came when he was 14 years old, sitting in a tree with his brother outside City Hall, watching the Los Angeles Raiders' 1984 Super Bowl parade. He held a sign that read, RAIDERS 38, DEADSKINS 9.

Los Angeles is not so different from any other nook of this football-consumed country. Its citizens are thrilled to see three teams in the playoffs and another in first place, but they are hungry for minicamp too.