MLS Week 11 Divine Comedy: Real Rankings, People...

I mean, they're more or less all the same, yes?

(...and some as yet unaddressed discomfort with the same.)

With this week, I officially begin the work of formally ranking all the clubs in Major League Soccer. As always, this project deserves a caveat – mainly because the essential task at hand boils not just to separating apples from apples, but red delicious apples from red delicious apples. It's not all baffling, obviously. I mean, some are disgusting mealy messes, but what about the ones with thick, shell-like skins? Are those better than the ones that have that weird chemical slick texture on the outside? In plainer terms, the real challenge comes with calling one club better than the other in a league that has been consciously managed to make all the clubs as equal as possible. My people call this parity (yours might call it maize).

Personal headaches aside, I decided to retain the Heaven, Purgatory, Hell frame. Each team will still be assigned a ranking, but I'll also place those rankings within those three ultimate destinies, the meaning of which is identified below. Oh, and I'm adding a new angle this week: arguing in favor of three results as the most significant of the past weekend. Let's dig in, shall we?

I managed only two and a half full games this Week 11 (stupid blackouts, and wicked cable companies!!):

Houston Dynamo v. Portland Timbers
San Jose Earthquakes v. Columbus Crew ('Quakes finally on my personal viewer board!)
Philadelphia Union v. DC United (just the second 1/2 here)

As always, the number in parentheses after each team's name is the number of times I spent the full 90 with them in 2015. That's as opposed to the previous ranking. I don't do that. Uh, sorry?

And now, the biggest, most important results of MLS’s Week 11