Looking at the class early on, I'm going to take some risks, I think.
I've been reading through the thread (up to page 24 now), and there's a lot of good information in there. My team right now is a very sad +21/-8, so there's a lot of work to be done. I'm confident I can push .500, though, since C13 seems fairly weak.
Just to make sure, I shouldn't spend any RP until next week, right? What's the schedule for when recruiting starts to roll over?
It skips the first Friday, then you get points every Friday after that. Points do NOT carry over from season to season so spend em all during the season.
If you put points onto players before Monday or Wednesday's games, they will show up after games are simmed. This is important as it can be used to scare people off or could hurt you when trying to sneak up on a player. Also CPU coaches wont put points onto players until Friday, so if you do points early the CPU will potentially MAX on Friday where it otherwise may have done 8 or 9 points. So the general consensus is not to put points on until Thu/Fri with a few exceptions.
First, being to scare someone off a recruit and the Second, being Friday night after the reveal. Recruiting will occur on Saturday mornings as well as the 3 game nights. This is used as a strategy on guys that are unranked at the reveal to see if by maxing them again they push into the rankings. This helps to determine if you have competition and your strategy moving forward. Ie dropping off, finding others in the net etc.
With regards to your first season, There are 2 trains of thought. Season one is kind of a free pass. You can shoot for the moon and just go with what you get. If you get lucky, then next season is easier to recruit and things are good.
The second, would be to go for +1/+2 guys and build up your team slowly. Like you said it should be easier to get into top tier of C13, so getting some solid role players would help you achieve that goal and thus help your recruiting as you start to win more and more games.
Deciding your path really comes to 1 question. If you end up with 3 players worse than what you have now are you ok waiting 6 weeks to try again or will you get frustrated and lose interest?
If you're fine taking a shot and starting from scratch next season then take a shot. I did this in L15 and it paid off. With how bad L7 C13 is, I took the slow approach and it paid dividends quickly as each season I was able to over recruit who I had and put the previous starters on the bench and eventually NA. Just a question of your patience.