By Ryan Altizer -- It sounds cliché, but it really is crunch time in the Arena Football League.

The season is winding to its merciful conclusion for some, while it is heading for a nail-biting, edge-of-your-seat finish for others.

The good news is that there are a lot more teams that will be sweating it out until the very end than ones that will be making offseason plans four or five weeks before the end of the year. You can thank a very jumbled playoff picture for that.

In the National Conference, there are far more good teams than there are playoff spots. With only six spots available and eight teams within a game of .500, someone is going to get left out. For instance, if the season ended today (sorry Columbus, you’re not that lucky!) both New York and Tampa Bay would be on the outside looking in. They both have plenty of time to get back in the top six, but someone is going to end up out in the cold come playoff time.

That’s a shame considering how woefully bad the American Conference is. While the playoff field is crowded with worthy teams in the National Conference, the picture is just as blurry in the American Conference, but for the opposite reason. With only two teams above .500, there is a good chance that four teams will get into the postseason from the American Conference with losing records. Four teams!

Hopefully, that is a stretch. With the horses coming down the stretch, a few (even some from the American Conference) are starting to kick it into high gear.

Arizona is on the verge of a .500 record and the Rattlers have a chance to get there with a win this weekend over Grand Rapids. The Rattlers showed last week that they are not to be taken lightly, ambushing the highly-favored Desperados in Dallas.

Unfortunately for fans in the desert, the Rattlers are not very good against teams from their own division. If Kevin Guy’s group can’t improve on their 1-3 mark against Western Division opponents, they won’t end up going very far in the playoffs. It’s great to beat solid teams like Dallas, Tampa Bay and Georgia from the Southern Division, but they don’t get to play those teams in the playoffs.

Sitting right above Arizona is a familiar face who I guarantee no one wants to see in the playoffs. That’s right, don’t look now but defending champion San Jose has won four of its last five and can become the second American Conference team to clinch a playoff berth this week. The SaberCats are now 7-5 and in control of the Western Division. With their loads of playoff experience, anyone counting on a Chicago cakewalk in the American Conference probably needs to rethink their predictions.

Over in the National Conference, the Georgia Force have won three straight and are the hottest team in the conference. Wins over Philadelphia and the red-hot New York Dragons have catapulted the Force back into the Southern Division race. Georgia faces a tough schedule with games at New Orleans and San Jose, in addition to home contests against Tampa and Chicago, but seems to be peaking at the right time.

If they can win three of their last five games, I think the Force might actually win the division. But they really need to beat the VooDoo on the road this week. Like Arizona, Georgia has not been good inside its own division, going only 1-3 against Southern Division teams. A win this week would tie them with New Orleans for second in the standings, right behind an Orlando team that seems very vulnerable right now.

Of course the biggest surprise of the whole season has to be the Cleveland Gladiators, who at 7-4 have far exceeded the expectations of anyone who ever saw the franchise play a down in Las Vegas.

Honestly, this year’s Gladiators look very little like their predecessors from Sin City, particularly here of late. Cleveland has not only won three in a row, but they have beaten three likely playoff teams in Colorado, Orlando and Philadelphia.

Their remaining schedule is clearly the most treacherous in the entire league, as they still have games left with Tampa, Dallas, Chicago and Philadelphia. But this team has proven itself all year, and I have a strong feeling the Gladiators will navigate those waters to no worse than the fourth seed in the National Conference.

As I said last week, the league is just too competitive right now to determine how things will look when the season ends five weeks from now. But these four teams have clearly positioned themselves as ones that will shape the playoff picture.

These teams are red hot, and even though one or more may flame out down the stretch, they are certainly making things interesting.