BRUTAL.
I could not have landed in a worse situation here . . . very difficult league, very experienced and active managers. Plus, I was an idiot at the beginning of the season and sold a few of the wrong players . . . some of my key players last year were 32 and 33 years old. I tried to get younger too fast and lost my depth.
I am hoping to survive this season, after which my roster should be back up to close to where I was last year. However, this is a very tough league . . . so I am holding on by a thread.
The biggest difference between IV and III, in my opinion, is the knowledge level of the managers (no offense intended). EVERY manager in my league understands the importance of managing gameshape and enthusiasm. That means there are no 'weeks off' where you can train a center at PG to pop their passing or OD . . . which makes it very difficult. I have spend the first third of the season training a few players out of position - and I am sitting at 1-7 with a payroll of $175K.
I cannot overstate how important a large arena is to the longer term development of teams in BB. Having that constant revenue stream is absolutely essential. Teams simply cannot survive at D.III without at least 11,000 seats or more . . . its just not possible.