I’ve posted the MLS conference-only standings before, and there’s a simple reason: the MLS schedule is silly.

What you have in MLS is two leagues, Western and Eastern, each playing a full round-robin, plus a number of exhibition games against the other league / conference.

It’s quite obvious that mixing all of these games together, when it comes to playoff seeding and qualification, is nonsense. It’s highly dependent on which teams from the other conference land on your schedule.

With this in mind, let’s look at the “true” standings in each conference, with the exhibition games removed.

WESTERN

Rk Team Points GP PPG W-L-T GF-GA GD
1 San Diego 55 28 1.96 17-7-4 59-34 25
2 Vancouver 53 28 1.89 15-5-8 53-32 21
3 Minnesota 47 28 1.68 13-7-8 47-32 15
4 Los Angeles FC 46 28 1.64 13-8-7 55-36 19
5 Seattle 46 28 1.64 13-8-7 47-39 8
6 Austin 39 28 1.39 11-11-6 27-36 -9
7 Salt Lake 38 28 1.36 11-12-5 34-42 -8
8 Dallas 38 28 1.36 10-10-8 40-41 -1
9 Portland 38 28 1.36 9-8-11 35-37 -2
10 San Jose 35 28 1.25 10-13-5 48-52 -4
11 Colorado 34 28 1.21 9-12-7 34-46 -12
12 Houston 32 28 1.14 8-12-8 36-45 -9
13 LA Galaxy 27 28 0.96 6-13-9 38-47 -9
14 St. Louis 26 28 0.93 6-14-8 34-47 -13
15 Kansas City 23 28 0.82 6-17-5 37-58 -21

Removing Eastern Conference games ends up with no major changes to the overall standings in the west, happily. The bands of teams are even more clear (SDFC and Vancouver at the top, Minnesota and LAFC in the next , then a glut of teams with losing records below them).

EASTERN

Rk Team Points GP PPG W-L-T GF-GA GD
1 Philadelphia 55 28 1.96 17-7-4 49-24 25
2 Miami 55 28 1.96 16-5-7 64-41 23
3 New York City 52 28 1.86 16-8-4 43-32 11
4 Charlotte 49 28 1.75 16-11-1 44-39 5
5 Cincinnati 49 28 1.75 15-9-4 38-31 7
6 Nashville 45 28 1.61 13-9-6 50-36 14
7 Columbus 42 28 1.5 11-8-9 47-46 1
8 Chicago 40 28 1.43 11-10-7 53-52 1
9 Orlando City 38 28 1.36 9-8-11 51-45 6
10 New York 35 28 1.25 10-13-5 34-39 -5
11 New England 32 28 1.14 9-14-5 37-41 -4
12 Atlanta 24 28 0.86 5-14-9 32-54 -22
13 Montréal 21 28 0.75 4-15-9 26-50 -24
14 Toronto 21 28 0.75 3-13-12 32-42 -10
15 D.C. United 20 28 0.71 3-14-11 22-50 -28

The biggest change to the East standings is that Cincinnati drops all the way down to fifth place, from second. They avoided the entire top five in the West, and cleaned up, earning 16 of 18 possible points in those matchups.

Cincinnati’s polar opposite is NYC, which had a tough schedule - drawing Minnesota, LAFC, and Seattle - but also managed just four points against the West, total.

Philadelphia still wins the East in this scenario, but it comes down to number of wins (or goal difference, if you prefer).

Congratulations to San Diego and Philadelphia, who are (still) the true conference champions in MLS. And it’s nice to know that this year, the playoff teams remained the same.

In the future, though, I still think MLS needs to change how the champions of each conference are calculated, to this method. It’s only fair.