MLS Week 9 Collective Rankings

With one exception, Sports Illustrated’s Ryan Hunt, the Semi-Detached Pundit Collective (SDPC) has rendered its somewhat baffled judgment on Week 9 of Major League Soccer’s 2007 season. Since I don’t have time for a lot of commentary today, here’s the short version: dude, it’s a mess.

Perhaps to compensate for the loss of Msr. Hunt’s contribution, this week’s collective rankings adds a feature: a parenthetical acknowledgement of where each team stood in last week’s rankings.

Moving on, here’s the source material for this week’s SPDC rankings:

It’s a Simple Game
The Other Football
Sideline Views (Luis Bueno)
Soccer by Ives (Ives Galarcep)
WVHooligan
My Soccer Blog
MLS Underground
ESPN

Und jetz, der rankings!

1. Kansas City Wizards, 1.1 (last week: 2/3; 2.8)
2. Red Bull New York, 2.0 (last week: 1st; 1.1)
3. New England Revolution, 3.1 (last week: 2/3; 2.8)
4. DC United, 4.4 (last week: 6th; 5.4)
5. Colorado Rapids, 5.1 (last week: 4th; 3.9)
6. FC Dallas, 6.9 (last week: 5th; 5.1)
7. Toronto FC, 7.1 (last week: 8th; 8.9)
8. Chivas USA, 8.0 (last week: 7th; 7.4)
9. Houston Dynamo, 8.4 (last week: 9th; 9.4)
10. Chicago Fire, 9.0 (last week, 11th: 10.5)
11. Los Angeles Galaxy, 11.3 (last week: 10th; 9.9)
12. Columbus Crew, 12.0 (last week: 12th; 11.3)
13. Real Salt Lake, 12.6 (last week: 13th, 12.9)

OK, really, some quick comments:

- There's fairly real buy-in for DC's improvement and, appropriately, a more subtle buy-in for the more subtle improvements occurring with Real Salt Lake; Houston also gets honorable mention, but that could have as much to do with the lousy West and picking up their first win in ages.

- The bigger climbers, though, include: the Chicago Fire (for an aggregate improvement of 1.5!?); the Wizards (1.7); and, the winners by a hair, Toronto FC (1.8). Holy crap. Maybe they are playoff-bound.

- The big losers: the Rapids 1.1 is a pretty big drop, as was the 1.4 slap put on LA; but that 1.8 hurt the Collective put on Dallas says the most.

All for now. Gotta go.