Ctots Ctalks is pretty elite, idk who told you it wasn't. Stick with it.
It's lowercase Beta in Greek, it's used so that those players get filtered out on the portal when displaying player stats in leaderboards and team stats.
You can sign free agents in the VHL, but generally you won't find many options there. In recent seasons, FA's completely dry up before the season even starts. It's sort of the punishing nature of competitive leagues, you have to really hope you get it right when building in the offseason.
Your E conundrum is.....pretty spot with a lot of thoughts I have as well. We want to tell the VHLE that they're a competitive league and to focus on winning games, but we also recognize that they still have a purpose of continuing to engage and develop users. Due to the league's caps.....they're pretty counterintuitive goals. Developing players well means they're likely to be gone within a season, which ruins the competitive nature. Frankly I think that the insanely cyclical nature of the M would be better suited for the E, where teams can really lean into capped players and trade younger players or draft picks to rebuilders. But yeah, it's odd.
I'm not saying "I love you" back.