The Commissioner's ruling is final in all matters. If two or more owners should dispute a ruling, the Commissioner may poll at least three other owners (in this league or, in some instances, a different league, such as on trade disputes) and may reverse his ruling if a 60% majority of the consulting owners would agree with the disputing owners. Should the integrity of the office of Commissioner become compromised through possible conflicts of interest, another member (or an outside agency if necessary) may assist or be assigned as league Commish, as the need arises.

Commish duties during the season shall be: To collect starting lineups from each owner and track the resulting scores; To notify the owners of each week's results, and the league standings each week; To oversee each league's weekly waiver wire and award players thereby; and to declare a champion in accordance with the league rules.

In order to receive league reports and e-mail and to submit lineups, each owner shall be required to maintain an active e-mail account throughout the season. The owner is responsible for submitting any address changes to the commish AND at the league website; the commish's office is not responsible for lost or misdirected e-mail.

We only operate family-oriented, G-rated fantasy leagues, and expect owners to respect one another. All team names and all league communications are expected to conform to this standard: No abusive, harrassing, or inappropriate communications of any kind. The first obvious infraction of this rule in any season will result in a 10% penalty deducted from that owner's score the following week, although the Commissioner reserves the right to issue an initial warning in some instances. After the initial 10% penalty, a second occurrence will result in automatic expulsion from the league with no appeals process. Good-natured trash talk, however, is encouraged and expected; other than that, let your results do the talking. EXCEPTION: Certain B5 characters, i.e. human military/security personnel, are known to indulge in a bit of mild profanity as one may sometimes expect from such profession. The occasional "dammit, Jeff" or whatever will be considered in character for those whose teams are based on such individuals.

Late in the regular season, a close eye is paid to starting lineups that may be considered "throwing a game." There is sometimes a temptation, when out of the championship hunt, to purposely lose to improve chances of getting a better draft spot by submitting a starting lineup with injured players, bye week players, backups, etc. This will not be tolerated. The Commish will, at his sole discretion, alter any such lineup so that the best possible lineup will be used. This is an act of extreme poor sportsmanship and cowardice that is inexcusable.

Each week's starting lineup must be submitted at the league website before kickoff of each player's NFL game. Players in early games are locked in at kickoff time of their game, and other players are locked in at noon Eastern time on Sunday. This means that if an owner makes a complete lineup submittal on Wednesday and decides to change it on Friday, he/she may change any player except those who played in a Thursday game, for example.

Each week each LONAFF team will field the following: 1 QB, 2 RBs, 2 WR, 1 TE, 1 WC (RB, WR, or TE), a PK, and a D/ST. At no time may any LONAFF roster contain more than 18 players. (As always, the term "player" includes defense/ST unit.)

4. TIE GAMES. A tie game during the regular season counts as a tie. Tie games in the playoffs are decided by the following tiebreakers: (1) Highest-scoring individual bench player, (2) Highest-scoring bench overall, (3) Highest-scoring individual starting player, (4) Previous W-L record, (5) Previous highest-scoring game.

5. TRADING RULES. Trades will not be allowed any later than Sunday kickoff of the NFL week before Thanksgiving. Trades are then not allowed until the league championship game is complete.

Waiver wire order may not be traded.

Trades involving future draft picks may only be made one year in advance; for instance, trades made during the 2004 draft or season may not include any picks beyond the 2005 draft, and no trades involving 2006 picks will be allowed until the 2005 draft is underway.

The Commissioner reserves the right to veto any trade, but before said veto is final, a panel of three owners (in a different league) may be consulted, and their opinion taken into account. If two or more owners should dispute any ruling, trade or otherwise, the Commissioner may poll at least three other owners in any league on the matter, and may reverse his ruling if a 60% majority of the other owners would agree with the disputing owners.

No "loaner" or "ricochet" trades. One-month moratorium on reacquiring players. Once you've traded a player to another team, he may not be reacquired for any reason until one full month later, or if no fantasy games have been played since the player was traded previously.

The first such period closes each Wednesday night at 10pm Eastern time. The second such period is from midnight Eastern time each Wednesday night until noon Eastern time Saturday. There will be no second waiver wire period during weeks with a regular season NFL game that begins earlier than 3pm Eastern on Saturday.

The order of waivers will be the reverse order of standings at that time, with the following tiebreakers: (1) conference W-L record, (2) division W-L record, (3) total points, and (4) head to head. EXCEPTION: Preseason waivers are one week before kickoff of the first regular season NFL game, and the order of each preseason waiver period (two per week) shall be the same as the natural draft order for Round One of the general draft.

If an owner applies for a free agent who is not available when his turn comes up, and alternates have also been taken, he retains the dropped player. Any player who has been dropped in any waiver period will be unavailable for pickup until the next waiver period.

At no time shall any team's roster contain more than 18 players.

7. THE DRAFT. Player selection will be made each year via online draft, which will be done through the league website and published via e-mail. The draft will begin no more than one month prior to kickoff of the regular NFL season. Each team will keep 10 players from the previous year's roster, and each year's draft will consist of 8 rounds. Keepers must be named at least one week prior to the beginning of the draft.

Each draft pick will be made at the league website and automatically sent to all owners by the software. The message will include notification of whose turn is next. Each owner will have a maximum of 18 hours to make a selection, to allow for being out of pocket. However, selections should certainly be made well before this time, and there is a "predraft list" feature so that you can submit a list when your turn is approaching; you will be awarded the highest available on your list in this case. (Personally I tend to use the "predraft" extensively, as it helps speed up the draft and removes last-second emotional waffling on my part; the predraft list can be easily modified at any time before your turn comes up.)

If you miss a draft pick, you can make it up at any time, but you cannot select any player chosen since the clock expired on your pick.

Draft order will be determined by playoffs; see below.

8. LEAGUE MAKEUP: The 12 teams will be split into two conferences: "Green" and "Purple." Each conference will have two divisions: "Earth" and "Minbar" in the Green conference and "Beyond the Rim" and "Space" in the Purple conference.

Teams will have the potential to jump from conference to conference individually, and consequently from division to division, each year. The conference/division structure will therefore remain static, while the makeup of each division will likely change each year. (Since it's random, there has to be the potential, however unlikely, that a division may remain unchanged.)

This will be determined by web dice rolls, with teams being placed in divisions at random, alphabetically from division to division each year, beginning after the 2003 season (highest three dice rolls in Beyond The Rim division, next-highest three in Earth division, next-lowest three in Minbari division, lowest three in Space division). In this way it's likely that some teams will remain in the same division, and even possible that an entire division may remain the same.

9. PLAYOFF FORMAT. The top six teams play in a championship bracket, and the others in a consolation bracket. This is determined by final standings, with each of four division champs getting automatic bid, and two wild cards being the two best teams not winning a division. Wild cards, and playoff seeds, are by W-L with the following tiebreakers: (1) head to head amongst all teams tied, (2) conference W-L record, (3) division W-L record, and (4) total points.

Winner of the championship bracket gets bragging rights, respect, and a virtual trophy at the league website, with winner of the consolation bracket getting #1 pick the following year (beginning with the 2005 draft). It should be noted that consolation bracket includes all six non-championship bracket teams, with seeding in reverse order, with league's worst W-L record getting #1 seed, etc.

Top two seeds in each bracket get a bye in week 15. #3 seed plays #6 seed in week 15, and #4 seed plays #5 seed also, in each bracket. Then, 3-6 winner meets #2 seed in week 16 and 4-5 winner meets #1 seed in week 16, in each bracket. Winners meet in week 17 for league title; any owner who wishes to use a player's stats from his first game in the NFL playoffs, in lieu of said player's stats in his week 17 game, may do so.

Beginning with the 2005 draft, the draft order will be determined by these playoff results, as follows, each round proceeding in the same order of selection: