I know you could
only go through 15 years in HC before having to restart. Thats enough for me anyway though.
When I said "around 50 franchises" I was referring to the 60 draft classes that were available. Which I think is also plenty. You're right about the fact that you'd see the same guys in the same order though but that should be easy to fix if instead of just having 4 paths where the draft classes always go in the same order they could either:
a) randomize the order of the draft classes in each path or
b) make the draft class order from 1-60 set in stone however let the user choose which draft class he'd like to start with. That way if I've already played through classes 1-15 I can start my next chise at 16 and keep right on going.