And in my experience, the "did well in the cup" question is both not that big of a component of the overall fan survey and is more forgiving for lower division teams than for NBBA and d2 teams.
Winning your TV and rival games is, in my experience, a much larger portion of the fan survey than anything else, and then overall standing in your league is a close second. Most everything else seems to be more decorative than effective for fan survey.