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My love for Kyle Beckerman is about all that's keeping me from wanting Real Salt Lake to fail miserably this season.

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If you've been following this blog for more than a few months, then you know that the MLS Power Rankings are something that we cherish around here. Even when the teams have barely just started playing preseason games, Power Rankings are a great way to see where your team stacks up.

The SB Nation MLS team does Power Rankings different from most folks. We operate under the standard that teams shouldn't be ranked 1-18. Rather, there are four general tiers of teams. I handed the reigns of the Power Rankings over to Jeremiah Oshan for this season, and the results can be found here.

For DC United, finding itself in the third tier is already a significant improvement for a club that spent every single week in the bottom tier in 2010. We even managed to somehow get one first tier vote, and it didn't come from me. We also managed to get one last place vote, which I still believe to be totally unfounded and based far outside reality.

The rest of our collective rankings follow pretty closely to my own. Real Salt Lake is the only team unanimously in the top tier, which makes me want to root against them pretty hard. As much as I like Kyle Beckerman and Nick Rimando, there's a certain arrogance to that organization and its fanbase that doesn't quite line up with their trophy case, which contains only one item at this point.

What do you think about our opening MLS Power Rankings? D.C. being ranked towards the top of the third tier seems pretty fair at this point. Will we shoot up higher once Charlie Davies is signed?