yeah so the question before the season was if Minnesota brought in enough legitimate players or not ... i'm getting flashbacks to Year 1 of VWFC when pretty much the entire team was NASL 2nd division quality, and it showed!
Finally a team bad/good enough to defy the gravitational pull of MLS PARITY.
Garber found a genius way to shift the balance of power between West/East. Give Western teams a bye and install an instant supporter's shield contender into the East
are we forgetting that a couple years back Houston (who were coming off of a Cup final appearance iirc) & SKC moved west and were replaced by 2 expansion teams? the east has been a joke for a long time, and is probably still the much weaker conference
edit: Houston had b2b finals losses in '11 & '12, SKC won in '13, both moved west in 2015