The city of Miami and its surrounding areas — Sunrise and Boca Raton, Florida — have enjoyed a magical sports run in 2023. The Miami Hurricanes made the NCAA Final Four in men’s basketball and the Elite Eight in women’s basketball. Florida Atlantic, in Boca Raton, made the Men’s Final Four. Now the Miami Heat have reached the NBA Finals, days after the Florida Panthers reached the Stanley Cup Final. What a gold rush for one collection of nearby communities in South Florida.

If the Heat can upset the Denver Nuggets, and if the Panthers can win their first-ever Stanley Cup against the Las Vegas Golden Knights, maybe Miami’s 2023 will become the greatest year ever for any city in the history of American sports. Maybe.

Right now, however, before the NBA Finals and Stanley Cup Final begin, the year 1972 in Los Angeles is a greater sports year for an American city.

We wrote about this in our 15-part 2020 series on The Los Angeles Sports Empire, chronicling the years 1958-1989, when the City of Angels was a city of championships.

Here’s an excerpt from Part VII of the series, focusing on the early 1970s, the absolute height of that empire in L.A.:

“The early 1970s marked the height of the Los Angeles Sports Empire because, from 1970 through 1973, USC baseball and UCLA hoops won their respective national championships in each of those years. Los Angeles owned college baseball and basketball for four years running, and they also doubled up in 1968 as well.

“When USC football won a national title in 1972, Los Angeles owned the national championship in all three major collegiate team sports. When USC won the national title in 1967 and 1974, Los Angeles’s stature grew even more.

“If you include all three major collegiate team sports, Los Angeles won all three championships in 1972. It won two of the three national championships in 1967, 1968, 1970, 1971, 1973, and 1974.”

Read more on The Los Angeles Sports Empire in the links we will share below. If you missed this series when it was first published three years ago, here’s a great chance to catch up: