I'm actually at 896k, not 869.
Was just talking about the top 8 players. Would have used top 10, but some teams don't go that deep in league games. [Can't believe I still have my entire D2 team completely in tact(!) with Alas tacked on...]
Only meant that a team can be at a huge spending disadvantage & still compete. Speaking of winning on the cheap, look at what USA Elite
(23172) has been doing for a while in D2. Pretty impressive. Reminds me of when I arbitrarily tried to win D3 with a sub $100k payroll. Even made back to back finals with none of my players making over $10k. So counting that as a success, even if I didn't quite finish it off.