PHOENIX - Back in the day, the AFL were the less popular cousins of the NFL.

After failing to compete with the superior league for popularity, the AFL decided to merge with the NFL and everything has been all happy lolly golly since.

But in 1987, a new AFL had surfaced, with new rules, a new gridiron,and a new schedule. This new AFL wasn't known as the American Football League, but the Arena Football League.

The field is condensed to 50 yards, enough to fit into a basketball or hockey arena and speed and scoring is the name of the game but can be totally dominated with a bruising power style running back.

But even in the NFL offseason when the Arena League played out its regular season, it was still in the shadows of the beast and in 2009 the league folded. Just like the AFL of old.

Now the mighty NFL is in a lockout with the chance of losing its season to greed. The perfect time for an arena football revival.

But is the NFL lockout enough for the sport's popularity to spike?

Take the Arizona Rattlers for example. They have their division championship locked down. They have won two Arena Bowls in the past and have been to three straight Arena Bowls in recent memory. They clearly are more successful than their NFL counterpart.

Yet in a game against the Iowa Barnstormers, Arizona football legend Kurt Warner's old arena team, only 8,664 fans were in attendance in the U.S. Airways Center which fills 15,505 seats for Arena Football. That's only a little more than half the arena's capacity.

However if the upper deck was out of the equation, then it did look respectable.

What football fans don't know about and is obviously missing out on is that arena football is the ultimate football fan experience. Everyone in attendance has the best view to a football game and those in the lower levels seats are closer than one could possible get to.

The U.S. Airways Center blasted pop music between every play and there videos of the players telling the fans that it was "noise meter time" or it was "third down lock down"—which, by the way in arena football, there is no punting. 

The fans were into it and it was evident that the eight thousand fans who show up at the games, always come back the next week.

To top it all off, fans get to go down to the field to get player autographs. The football may be better in the NFL, but the fan experience in the AFL can't be beat.

There is no reason why football fans shouldn't get their fix by going to an arena football game and enjoying a fun time.

Especially if those fans are in Phoenix and are trying to avoid the summer sun.