just 'cause i am grumpy . . . you should note it helps to have had Upsyndrome and, for that matter, Golden Horde in the other conference. i got a trophy or two when the league champion came from the other conference. (sigh) 
Well Oscar...just since I am grumpy, I will defend myself :-)
At this point, there is no getting past Upsyndrome without running a negative $300K a week ...and what fool would do that? The way he grabbed all the NT bigs and the Merch advantage he has, puts him in a category by himself.
That said my team promoted to the NBBA quicker than I planned...we went to the NBBA Finals 4 seasons ago, with basically the same team that I won D2 with. That was a fun surprise...of course, we ran into NT Juggernaught TKI at the time, and almost pulled the upset. My team starts and rely's on two players that are currently less than $22K and 19K...and in previous seasons their salaries were lower. On paper, we don't look very impressive, but we keep getting it done ;)
Last night, I took $551K of payroll up against $786K of payroll and eeked out a win. So while I may not have your obstacles to overcome, I'm certainly not getting a free path to the Finals, and have obstacles of my own to overcome ;)