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In my last blog I wrote about how MLS has done a great job this year in providing us with a new playoff structure and how it was going to shake things up at the end of the season and into the playoffs. Well that was before I found out how the playoff bracket was going to be played out. I was under the assumption that the seeds 1 through 8 actually meant a normal playoff bracket (i.e. 1 vs. 8, 2 vs. 7 …etc) which is a logical assumption right? Not for this playoff structure. Since their of five east conference teams and three west conference teams in the playoffs, one of the east conference teams (KC) has to play in the west conference bracket instead of the east. That means an east conference team could potentially win the west conference championship. Sounds crazy right? Don’t get me wrong, I love how it came down to the final games to see which teams would advance to the playoffs and if you watched the games this weekend you could definitely see the league is moving in the right direction. But with this system there are too many bad scenarios that could come up. For instance the 1st place team now has a worse chance of making it to the final since they aren’t playing the worst team in the first round they are playing the second worst team.
MLS is trying their best to preserve conference rivalries and with 13 teams this year it was certainly a challenge to figure out a playoff system that would work perfectly. I hope that by adding another team next year that they don’t revert to the old system because I think this new system shows a lot of promise. My solution would be to eliminate the conference finals all together and make it a single table playoff race. The money that would have gone to the east/west conference champs would then go to the winners of the supporters shield (currently worth $0). This would add even more incentive for the teams to do well in the regular season and make it even more interesting then it was this year.
Either way the playoffs are going to be exciting this year and I am going to watch every minute (I wish I was playing). You better cheer for DC United!
Jamil | 
