LONAW 1998

In the autumn of 1998, the fifth and final season of the sci-fi television program Babylon 5 (or "B5") was heading toward its conclusion, and the NFL football season began during the long hiatus between the episodes "Movements of Fire and Shadow" (which aired on June 17) and "The Fall of Centauri Prime" (which aired on October 28).

As a fan of Babylon 5, I was amused to find a fantasy football league on the Sandbox site called the "League of Non-Aligned Worlds," which is a reference to the show. In the B5 universe, there are a few major races of sentient beings (Human, Minbari, Narn, Centauri, and Vorlon) but many of the other, less powerful races in the galaxy are organized politically as the League of Non-Aligned Worlds.

The final episode of B5 aired in November of 1998, and the show has been in reruns ever since. But the League of Non-Aligned Worlds, or LONAW, lives on and continues to grow and evolve. Note: As of football season 2004, all five seasons of Babylon 5 (as well as a DVD set of all the B5 movies) have been released on DVD! Woo! [Amazon link]

The league champion in the 1998 season was the London Jets, who finished 13-4, one game ahead of the Za'Ha'Dum Shadows (another, creatively spelled, reference to B5). Unfortunately, no records are known to exist from the 1998 season, but, if memory serves, the Jets offense was spearheaded by running back Terrell Davis, who consistently put up the big numbers.