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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?

With just two weeks remaining in the regular season, there isn't much competition for spots in the MLS playoffs.

But there is still competition in the SBNhanced MLS Power Rankings! This week the big change is the Seattle Sounders finally journeying into the top tier.  A second consecutive Open Cup title and a win in Kansas City when the home team really needed it more helped give the voters what they needed to see to include the Sounders with the rest of the best teams in MLS.

We also had some slight movement towards the bottom, as the Chicago Fire were able to hop back into the third tier following their victory over the Columbus Crew, and the Philadelphia Union moved up because of... um... because of their home loss to the Galaxy? Ok, it doesn't always make sense.

Lastly I should mention that we're now up to 11 votersf or the first time thanks to today's addition of SB Nation's new Kansas City Wizards blog: The Daily Wiz.

This week's version of our MLS Power Rankings features some unanimity at the top, with all eight SB Nation Soccer voters naming Real Salt Lake, FC Dallas, and the New York Red Bulls to the top tier.

What gets interesting though is the middle. With eight teams likely in the playoffs, only the Kansas City Wizards are left in our "Outside looking in" third tier. They're the only team left with a shot. But do they really have a shot? With four games left and trailing the Colorado Rapids by eight points, not much. The question is whether or not the Rapids will continue to perform like they did against D.C. United on Saturday night. If so, they might not earn another point the rest of the year.

The New York Red Bulls have hopped back into the top tier for the first time since Week 7. That's no surprise considering their decisive victory over the Los Angeles Galaxy. What I don't quite get though is why FC Dallas somehow lost two top tier votes. Perhaps the fact that they've tied three out of their last four matches? But still. Two losses the entire year is impressive. And I think they'll probably be back to their winning ways once Kevin Hartman returns in goal.

We also have a surprise entrant into the third tier: the Philadelphia Union?! Its the first time EVER they've been out of the bottom. The team is 2-1-1 since they're loss to D.C. United on Aug. 22, including a 3-0 win over Chivas USA last week. So yeah, I'd say they deserve. At least for a day until they lose in Colorado tomorrow.

The number of voters in the power rankings has almost doubled in size now, but one thing has stayed the same. The Columbus Crew have always been a member of the top tier. Until now.

Back-to-back multiple goal losses has caused our MLS bloggers to lose faith in the Crew. Their embarassing 4-0 loss at home to the Seattle Sounders changed a lot of minds about the Crew's chances of competing for the MLS Cup. And as their hopes of being the first team ever to win three straight Supporters' Shields have all but vanished, Columbus now leaves only three Western Conference teams in our top tier.

Poised to replace the Crew in that slot are the New York Red Bulls. A win in L.A. on Friday night (Saturday morning for most of us) would probably do it.

On the other side of the spectrum we have the Chicago Fire, who were just one vote away from the bottom tier this week. Could anyone have predicted that a month ago? Did anyone think that the Fire would actually get worse by bringing in Nery Castillo and Freddie Ljungberg?

As we welcome two new MLS blogs into our network this week, we're now in double digits for the power ranking voters. Thanks to our new Colorado Rapids blog Burgundy wave and Chicago Fire blog Hot Times In Old Town for joining in.

What does that mean? It means that we have four teams in each tier for the first time since April.

The LA Galaxy needed only one win over the Columbus Crew to vault themselves back into the top tier. They've established themselves once again as the favorites to win the Supporters' Shield after that big win. Or is it just the return of David Beckham that has our voters optimistic about their chances? Eh, we are a sarcastic group, but probably not.

New England moved up to the third tier despite their loss to Chivas USA. Perhaps a delayed reaction to their big win last week over the Seattle Sounders? And the Kansas City Wizards moved up despite it being their bye week. Hey, I don't claim to fully understand the voting.

Meanwhile, Toronto FC correctly determined that the only way to avoid falling down into the bottom tier after losing to D.C. United was to fire every decision maker in the organization.

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.

Could it be? The mighty sure have fallen. It took 22 weeks, but for the first time all season the Los Angeles Galaxy are no longer in the top tier.

Does this even make sense though? They're still the MLS point leaders. Are we seriously to believe that the team with the best record in the league is not going to be a championship contender?

This just goes to show that the SBNhanced Power Rankings don't necessarily coincide very much with the MLS Standings. Their purpose is to track how a team is performing, and project out through the remainder of the season and predict where each team will wind up.

The rest of the rankings continue to be fairly flat. The San Jose Earthquakes dropped down a level after their loss to the New York. But other than that, we're expecting the rankings to remain fairly constant for the rest of the season. But we also expected L.A. to remain at the top, so what do we know?