As we head into the season, I’d like to give my fellow fans an interesting piece of food for thought:  The 2012 Supporter’s Shield winner may be undeserving of the title.

A few days ago, mlssoccer.com released their latest round of 2012 Pre-Season Power Rankings and, to little surprise, the same team that topped the list last year is once again on top.  For many years, this meant little: the Power Rankings were nothing but a pundit’s best tool to engage his/her readership, stir up the riff-raff… and not much else.  The rankings held little actual value.

But over the last couple of years, thanks to better coverage and writing by those in the business of doing both, the preseason power rankings have been a fairly good indicator of – if not exact table placement – how the playoff picture would shake out.

But not this year.

While I have no doubt that this year’s power rankings are a fair representation of where the league’s concentration of quality lies, lurking beneath them is a dirty little secret:

Thanks to our “new and improved” schedule, at the end of the regular season, a team may find itself undeserving of its final table spot.  Even the regular-season champion, the Supporter’s Shield winner, may be undeserving of the honor.

Does that sort of problem sound familiar? Just call us the BCS.

And through some (slightly arbitrary) number crunching, I’m about to show you how and why.

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