NFL Playoffs: The Los Angeles Offensive to Nothing Super Bowl Worthy

It was still 70-plus degrees in January.

The season of winter was defined and embraced by a few strung-up electric lights here and there along with lines to the mall that snaked across the freeway off-ramps and wound up causing all sorts of trouble as much as 10 miles away.

This was the nature of Los Angeles at the end of the NFL season.  And now, as the playoffs have taken off, nothing has changed or stalled or varied.

A town of transplants and locals—all together too full of angst to succumb to the righteous nature of the NFL playoffs—were, again, too busy to care about what was happening across the country.

Apparently, there was simply too much to do on any given Sunday in Los Angeles.

It had been over 20 years since Los Angeles has had an NFL team.  Or at least something like that.  

Did the facts matter?

There were no banners.  No sweatshirts.  No little neck strings with team logos with work keys attached to it.

No flags waving for a specific team on the cars. 

Nothing.

At this rate, Los Angeles hasn't ever had an NFL team.  So who cares (or cared) and what does it matter.

OK, fine...If anything, they've had NFL players pass through while on some sophisticated and mystical carpet ride.  

Such players would and must include "Crazy Legs" Hirsch, Deacon Jones and Marcus Allen.  

And such players are a fleeting memory for at least 90 percent of the citizens of Los Angeles.

The NFL has never really worked in L.A.  

It's a league based on parody and grit and gumption and Los Angeles has no time for such things.

Los Angeles responds only to fast breaks, high flying, glitzy trophies and year-in and year-out dominance.

However, it's not an "anti-football" thing because USC Football has really anchored a corner for itself.  So has Mater Dei and a number of other local high school programs.  

But the NFL is a different beast.  The NFL demands and commands a lot of attention.

It's not an easy thing to get a bunch of hungover Los Angelenos out to anything, let alone to the tailgate for a losing football team at nine o'clock in the morning on a Sunday.

Sundays were a day of peace in Los Angeles.  There was no time for sausages.  This is when couples took walks and singles caught up with family and real friends.  Sundays were the official "bye day" for L.A.

I, of course, the forever washout, apparently, would spend my fall Sundays in the local sports bar with all the other NFL junkies and transplants and gamblers and misfits and wasteoids.  

It was like Vegas without the comfy chairs and the big screens.  

Bets were being made left and right.  Fans were cheering and jeering the next.  Then suddenly, right before halftime, fights would break out over the wrong circumstances and everyone would scramble to their corners.

And then suddenly, around the start of the third quarter, after everyone had their cigarette, a calming bliss would fall over most everyone and the crowd would realize that they were, after all, doing something awesome and different in the L.A. experience and this in itself made them neat and cool and hip.

We, the drunk, gambling, fanatics of teams from across the land, were engaging in a special ritual that only those who were present would ever be able to understand and participate in on any meaningful level.

But now, into the year 2012, this experience called "NFL Sunday" was becoming a "thing to do" for all Los Angelenos.

For a town full of quick-buck artists who survived on sucking the blood out of anything new and hip and cool and awesome and sweet and awesome and hip and cool—the NFL was a beacon.  

The culture of ultimate chicken hawks, who were once waiting for the table under the TV Browns game because they were born and raised in Cleveland, were now traded in for the Fantasy Football crowd.

And precious seats were now being taken.

Disgusting.

Shameful.

Commercial.

Shoulder shrug.

Los Angeles.