the free leagues are still good competition. and Mgg im sorry, but most of the leagues have rules regarding ping differences on players. i dont think your ping would allow you to play with us even if you wanted to. im not sure what CEVO has, but i know when CAL was around they used to cap it at like 150 or something. and if the ping difference between teams was higher than i believe 50 they switched to a neutral server.
ie, if we all had 50-70 pings and the other team pinged 150. we would move to a server that was between the 2 teams and play there. The object is to get the pings close to even as possible to make even gameplay.
in regards to needing a solid 5. you actually need 7 or so. that way you have backups if someone cant make the match or if theres other issues. And yes, were all terrible. paying for cevo would be a waste of money to watch us go 0-12 or whatever it is.