Another one from BB-Charles in a fed that I am in:
There seemed to be an expectation by the BB's that the top teams would compete for titles by buying the highest salary players. That hasn't happened and the top teams are the ones that have built quality across their lineup more evenly.
Actually, our expectation was that top division teams would compete by buying the highest salary players - there's a difference. The idea is actually that buying a monster is a quick way for a team who has salary space but not a ridiculous amount of cash (i.e., a newly promoted team or one just avoiding relegation and ready for an upgrade) to quickly become competitive. My experience with one of the first of these one-player teams has been that it was a great way to stay afloat in USA's division II (when about 60% of my salary budget was for one player competing against teams on similar budgets) but was ultimately a strategy that would not let me progress further. To get better, I finally had to go backwards and lose some games while redesigning the team.
In many ways, it's like enthusiasm management that includes several regular-season crunch times. It's a good way to claw your way to around 9-13 and a decent chance to stay up, but it's probably not going to get you to the B3 anytime soon.
Run of the Mill Canadian Manager