You should really release most of your team :D
[...]
The only HOF draftee I would consider selling /releasing is one with exceptionally bad OD and ID, everything else works for me. I always play them in Cup games at the beggining and then when I loose in cup it's really easy to find minutes for training.
Look what kind of prospect Dinaid Bukva was when I drafted him:
https://imgur.com/uJXJwfS
56 skill points 19 YO trainee with mediocre defense, not a great prospect at all.
Look at him now:
https://imgur.com/6JBGlUv
This choice of having x number of players (x being a big value) is one of the core elements of my playing strategy/philosophy.
I can reveal to you that I have kept at least one draftee since BB season 25 (if my memory serves me, I don't have time to verify that again right now). See, this is where it gets somewhat complicated if and as I want to keep on the tradition; on those Seasons when I've been able to get player who I've trained to high-ish skills (and salary), I "can't" sell everyone else, as there might be a situation where I have to sell one of my better players (to avoid bankruptcy), which would leave me with 0 own draftees on one certain season, if that'd be the only draftee I have left on my team from that season.
(Yes, I think I have few players that are those "3rd" draftees on one given season that I could let go, but there aren't as many of those that you might think, and in the case of 40+ aged players their salary is already so minimal and getting even smaller, that there's even no point of firing them in order to get serious financial benefit).
So, as mentioned, especially these, say, 40+ year old players don't take much of my budget anyway. These 20-somethiing players with, say, 4K/week salary do cost quite a bit though if you count their cost for the next 15 seasons, and that's where the biggest long term cost (of this strategy/philosophy) comes from.
Like you probably remember, I had goal of acquiring 100 own draftees, which failed at 99.
Therefore I made "controlled panic firings" (meaning firings that enabled me to stick with afore mentioned draftee policy of mine) last Season, and haven't "re-combed" my roster since (to find all potential future firings), but like I said, it makes it harder/more tedious process as I want to make sure I won't make any mistakes in my firings that would eventually (due to a panic sale of a player later on, if there's only one draftee left from given season in my roster) break the streak that has continued since BB season 25.
Personally, I draft for potential only, since I have time for training as a homegrown team. I always mold players into system, never the other way. And I usually do circles between guards and bigs training, with those tweeners that don't fit anywhere ending up as solid SFs.
Time for me is not the problem, the skill set and other aspects of a player in question (and their suitability to certain type of training, considering their total skill set, how tall and old they are, elastic effect, etc.) often times are, and like I said, I really need to consider trainee not causing me too much loss in a "regular BB league" games, because I need to win certain amount of those - cup and friendlies solve only one third of the training challenge (but are important, otherwise it'd be very difficult to train low skilled players).
While I also often times do bigs and small training in cycles, apparently I should do some things differently as well.
What, and how exactly (considering I'm very likely going to stick with this philosophy of sticking with large numbers of players) with these budget restraints, including (hopefully) not being able to acquire good drafting positions (because that'd mean I'd be relegating) would I achieve that, is a million dollar question.
Or at least $573K question, as that's how much the budget is at minus currently. ;P