The following is what I won't miss about the Arena Football League in 2009: the noise. I don't mean the racket generated by fans at Utah Blaze games. I'm talking about indoor fireworks, not to mention that guy with the heavy hand on the volume control.

It always sets my teeth on edge when an arena overwhelms actual human noise with artificial sound.

Call it the "authentic noise rule." The sound system should never, for an extended period, overwhelm the sound of the fans. That's like a salad overshadowing the entree.

But this is what I will miss: players grateful to have a job, and a game played the way you did in your basement when you were 11.

It's hard to dislike a sport where you can tackle against the walls, and every play might be a touchdown.

AFL owners voted Sunday to cancel the 2009 season, pending approval of the players' union. EnergySolutions Arena will have a bit less, well, energy this winter. That's too bad. There's a lot to be said for a crowd that wears jeans and ball caps to work, as well as the game. The plan is to restructure and come back in 2010. The reality is the league may not ever return.

How do you disappear for a year and pick up where you left off? The attention span of most Americans is about 30 seconds. If your favorite team isn't playing right this minute, you can always threaten to spend the time texting your new BFF.

It's hard to know whether anyone will care about the Blaze 12 months from now. Still, restructuring is better than losing money for another year. So the league decided to back up and reassess.

While the AFL certainly isn't for everyone, it has carved a genuine niche. The league has gone beyond novelty sport status. It has been in existence 22 seasons.

It's not every day fans get to watch pro athletes who earn less than they do.

If you can't stand going from the Super Bowl until September without football, this isn't a bad option. Sure, it's NFL on energy drinks, but they pass, block, tackle and catch.

There are a lot worse options than that.

Arena football isn't the first league to interrupt or suspend a season. A lockout in 2004-05 shut down the NHL for the entire year. Yet season ticket sales today are reportedly up from last year.

Major League Baseball has had eight work stoppages, one of them wiping out the 1994 World Series. There were dire predictions the game would be irreparably damaged. But it didn't look that way last week when the Yankees signed CC Sabitha to a $161 million contract.

The NBA lockout of 1998-99 didn't do much to sidetrack salaries or ticket prices in that league.

All of the above survived.

It's true the AFL is a niche league. If the NFL canceled a season, almost everyone would notice; not so with the AFL. Which leaves room to wonder whether fans will forget the league while it is reorganizing.