Sorry about the delay here, but I was out of town for a few days.
Casey, Dreadball is perfect for where you are right now. The teams are affordable, the board is fairly small, and the games are quick. However, you get all the sports action you'd want plus the league/campaign building that I know you love. You really need to sell or trade what you can in order to get it.
A few years ago I lamented in the forums about wanting a good minis game with a neat setting, league rules, cool fluff, etc. I was basically describing another solid option to the oop GW offerings. Dreadball is that game. I love it.
What Drewcula said about Extreme being a variant like Dungeonbowl . I'm staying away from it at the moment. I like the simplicity of the base game plus I don't want to deal with the terrain pieces and stuff atm and focus on the teams.
Speaking of Drewcula, the man helped me out with a lot of questions and should be the DB go to guy.
Pete, I know you're into modelling...and though some of the minis from mantic may require a little trimming of flash, DB has some really diverse teams and a few are done up in that transparent blue, which I hadn't really seen in a minis game proper. Looks cool leaving parts of the mini clear:
dreadballnotebook.blogspot.com/2015/05/t...crystallan-team.html
The teams all around though are really cool. I'm digging the hobgoblins:
and the Star Frontiers fan in me wants the old-school looking Z'zor and Mechanites badly: