"This league is CRAZY tough. Maybe I ought to sell off my older guys, go down a division and train up some young talent."
Right! but that's what I'm trying to avoid. Kind of the weak way to go up. But seriously. We never get the weak D2 demotee that is done with the game, we get the ones that reset and want to go back up. Along with the 5-8 other competitive teams in the league, we are lucky when we can get two promotions out (22-0 record and upset in the finals promotee). So we just keep reloading.
I don't want to be the tool that does drop down, and its a 3 season process to get back up. (tank, d4 promote, d3 reload) which makes it very time consuming.