America's Most Lovable Pimp

>> EXCLUSIVE AUDIO: Hear the details on Snoop's pimpin' days and his beef with Suge Knight. And if you haven't already, catch Snoop's wisdom on teaching pee-wee football. He's a complicated guy -- and this week's cover boy.

It's a cold November night in Pomona, California, and Snoop Dogg's whole world has come to a virtual standstill because his favorite team, the Steelers, is just days away from the Super Bowl. He's put everything on hold -- he could and probably should be out touring to promote his new album, Tha Blue Carpet Treatment -- but nothing matters like the Steelers and winning that Super Bowl. "I had to tell management to leave me alone, record label leave me alone," he says, zipping down a desolate highway in his dark-blue Porsche Carrera, carefully rolling a blunt with both hands as he steers with his knees. "I don't wanna do no records, I don't wanna do no movies, I don't wanna do shit but football. Until I win this Super Bowl, the buck stops here. My business people always say it's a loss, because when I'm in football mode I don't go out and make money, but when I'm into these kids, it ain't about makin' money, it's about makin' they dreams come true on some real shit."

Snoop is head coach of the Pomona Steelers, part of the Snoop Youth Football League, a cherub-faced gang of nine- and ten-year-olds that includes his middle child, Cordell, and Nate Dogg's son Nigel. The league, now in its second season, has ten teams and 2,000 players, and Snoop is at every Steelers game and nearly every practice. The team works out from 6 to 8 p.m. on a dusty baseball field behind a church, and on this Thursday night, Snoop wears a black Steelers jacket and a yellow T-shirt, with a whistle around his neck. He huddles with the boys after each play, and as they rumble in from all parts of the field, few of them taller than five feet, their spindly legs hiding behind thigh pads, they seem to all yell at him at once.

"Coach Snoop, lemme get the ball this time!"

"Coach Snoop, can you believe I wore these pants last year?"

"Coach Snoop, I'm gonna watch Ice Age after practice!"

"Good job," he says, patting one boy on the helmet. "Way to find that inside hole." He leans over from the waist to be closer to them and calls the play. "We goin' double tight left, full house left. G-Man, you gon' be the quarterback."

The boys know he's a star, but they love him because they know he cares about them. Aaron, a kid he coached last season, says, "He make it fun. Other coaches just want to win. He want to win, but he want you to have fun at the same time."

Snoop, government name Calvin Broadus, 35, loves these boys so much that when they lose, he's crushed. "One time last year we lost and I cried," he says. "I mean, I really cried at the end of the game, tears in my eyes. I was that hurt." He loves them so much he even quit smoking weed for them. For a little while. It was a few years ago, when he first started coaching youth football in a predominantly white league in Orange County. "I'd just gotten into heavily coaching football," he says, "and I saw me comin' to practice smellin' like weed, my vision half-blurred and me too relaxed, and the parents lookin' at me like Snoop Dogg the gangster. So instead of the parents checkin' me sayin', 'Hey, Snoop, you smell like weed, why you comin' to practice high?,' I took it out of my game so none of the parents would get at me foul, and they'd let me coach. I did it for two, three months."

He says coaching has exponentialized the amount of time he spends with his kids -- his son Corde, called Spanky, is twelve (Snoop coached him to a Super Bowl win last year), his son Cordell, called Lil Snoop or Rook, is nine, and his daughter Cori, called Chocolate, is seven and a cheerleader. "I didn't never make time for my kids," he says. "I seen them through gifts and money. Now, through football, I spend time with them. Even if we sittin' in the house watching USC, we bonding. I used to put in zero time, but now I at least get moments with them." When Snoop was young he didn't know his father very well, but now they have a relationship, and Snoop, who bought his father a house in Atlanta, holds no grudge: "I forgive and forget, and I try to show that it's important right now, not what happened yesterday." He sees his football work changing other father-son situations. "I'm breakin' the chain," he says. "When I'm out there bonding with these kids, it makes their fathers want to become part of their lives, if they're not. It's a beautiful thing."