Week 23 SBNhanced MLS Power Rankings

If the weekly Power Ranking voting among SB Nation's MLS bloggers was broadcast on FSC this week, it would have been described as "chippy".

We had some disagreements stemming from how the tiers are titled and what those titles represent. Some take the titles literally. Some don't.

Richard Farley raised a valid point last week that our top two tiers had only six teams, when eight teams will make the playoffs. We explained that away as the top two tiers containing the teams that we feel will definitely make the playoffs, while the third contains all other teams that have a shot.

This week, another writer took his voting to a different extreme (to prove a point?), and granted the Seattle Sounders a top tier vote due purely to their entry into the Open Cup Finals (after, the top tier is labeled "Teams competing for Cups"), and then put D.C. United alone in the fourth tier since they've pretty much locked up the No. 3 draft pick. The counterpoint is that no one put the New England Revolution in the top tier when they were competing in the Finals of the Superliga (Do they even give out a cup? Maybe just a shot glass?). And United had managed to beat the Columbus Crew to advance to the Open Cup semis, I guess we'd have to assume that they belonged in the top tier too.

Might some changes to the tier titles be in the cards for next week? Possibly. But it doesn't really matter too much, because in the end, each team is where it belongs.