Sounds pretty good to me and I am sure the developers could come up with something along these lines.

[EDIT] I just saw one of the exploiters (team name Azkaine) with a 37.77* team rating who had 4 x 110*+ players so I tried looking at what Championship he/she was in and although the profile said 31, when I clicked on the "Championship" button for them I got an error message "Oops! Something went wrong. This team is not in a Championship." Bug or another exploit?

[EDIT 2] @ Black Monks: I really like your suggestion here.

I guess until there is a solution implemented by the developers however, I guess I will just have to continue to slowly improve my team in League, Tournament and GC matches as well as buying better players using RP not real cash that I can afford as and when I can to the point where my team star rating is enough to take on the teams I currently would not waste my time playing against. It will be slow going but I will make the most of it until something better comes along