Men in the arena: can indoor football be revived in the US?

Leagues like the IFL are minuscule in comparison to the behemoth that is the NFL. But they are often popular in the smaller markets they serve

Despite being one of the game's most well-known features, indoor football's condensed dimensions are still shocking to fans accustomed to gridiron's traditional, significantly more popular outdoor form. At 50 yards long and 28 yards wide, an indoor football field offers players roughly one-quarter the area of an NFL field.

To accommodate for this, indoor football permits fewer on-field players than its outdoor equivalent (eight and 11, respectively). You'll notice, however, that the number of players isn't reduced by nearly the same extent as the playing area. As a result, indoor football fields are crowded and, with so many players crammed into so small an area, the games are action-packed - and that's even before accounting for the padded walls.