The CBA is done. It’s not great, and someone still needs to ask the league office and the owners how they can reconcile their tough stances on free agency and raises with the “league of choice” ambition.

But now, we actually have a season. That means those of us who’ve been following the CBA and little else need to take a quick look around and see what’s actually happening in the league.

Knowing the league used to be easy. My goal the last couple of years I was at USA TODAY was to go to enough D.C. United games to see every team in the league, and I’d usually go to the visitors’ locker room to touch base with everyone. Over the course of a season, I’d get a good sense of every team’s style and personnel.

Now? Not so much. While embedded with the Washington Spirit, I don’t get to RFK as much as I used to, and watching on TV is limiting.

So now that I’ve given you absolutely no reason to read on … read these season predictions:

WEST

1. Seattle: The Shield winners lost DeAndre Yedlin but returned most of the core, including Clint Dempsey, Obafemi Martins and the occasionally ailing Ozzie Alonso. The back line has Brad Evans and Chad Marshall. They’re solid once again.

2. Los Angeles: Farewell, Landon. Hello, Steve Gerrard (eventually). Other than that, very little has changed for the champions. Jaime Pinedo is a capable keeper, Gyasi Zardes is a breakthrough talent, and Robbie Keane is Robbie Keane.

3. Dallas: Best team in the league when healthy? That’s what Matt Doyle said. They picked up GK Dan Kennedy in the farewell-to-Chivas-USA draft. Fabian Castillo and Blas Perez are part of a fun midfield.

4. Real Salt Lake: No more Kreis, and now no more Lagerwey. The Dukies are gone. They still have Kyle Beckerman, Javier Morales, Nick Rimando and Alvaro Saborio. They lost Nat Borchers and Chris Wingert, but Jamison Olave is back. So it’s still a recognizable team, with some youth talent coming in as well to join Luis Gil. I’ll disagree with PST – I think this team still gets into the playoffs.

5. Kansas City: Over to the West go the former Wizards, where Peter Vermes will always keep things organized. A lot of players have departed — Aurelien Collin, Claudio Bieler, C.J. Sapong — but Roger Espinoza is back from England. Their lineup has star power that the glitzier cities would envy — Graham Zusi, Benny Feilhaber, Matt Besler and Sydney Leroux’s husband, Dom Dwyer (24 goals across all competitions).

6. Portland: Nat Borchers, he of the most massive beard this side of Tim Howard, has joined the back line. They’ve got Darlington Nagbe. They’ve got DPs — Fanendo Adi up front, Liam Ridgewell at the back. Coach Caleb Porter also got an international keeper from Ghana, Adam Kwarasey. Getting Diego Valeri back from injury in May would put them in contention.

7. Vancouver: The Whitecaps probably get less credit than they deserve among us East Coasters who don’t often get to see them play. MLS Analyst Matt Doyle says they’re a dark-horse Cup contender. On Soccer Morning today, Andrew Weibe touted Pedro Morales as an MVP candidate. Costa Rican Kendall Waston is a solid center back. Kekuta Manneh is a dangerous winger. Under a good bit of pressure: Young Designated Player Octavio Rivero, a forward charged with igniting the offense.

8. San Jose: Dominic Kinnear is back in the Bay Area, and they’ve got Chris Wondolowski and Swiss international Innocent Emeghara up front. Matias Perez Garcia is the playmaker, and Marvell Wynne joins Clarence Goodson and Victor Bernardez at the back.

9. Houston: No more Dominic Kinnear. That just feels strange. They have Premier League vet Owen Coyle in charge, and they won the Cubo Torres sweepstakes. They’ve also got DaMarcus Beasley and ever-dangerous Brad Davis — not young, but they should be effective.

10. Colorado: As Jerry Seinfeld might say, who are these people? Coach Pablo Mastroeni might be tempted to run out on the field and play. They have a young DP in Argentine midfielder Juan Ramirez, and they’ve added Sam Cronin and Michael Harrington. Can Dillon Powers make a breakthrough?

EAST

1. D.C. United: Worst to first last year, but losing badly to Alajuelense in the CONCACAF Champions League doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence, and Fabian Espindola has to sit out a few games to start the season. Bill Hamid is behind a strong defense. Is Chris Pontius actually healthy?

2. New England: A surprise MLS Cup finalist last year, and now they’ll have Jermaine Jones for a full season. Lee Nguyen was an MVP candidate, and they have a gaggle of former phenoms who can produce — Juan Agudelo, Charlie Davies, Teal Bunbury.

3. Columbus: The MLS Armchair Analyst puts the Crew in the hunt for the Supporters Shield. Might be ambitious, but having Kei Kamara running around up top while Federico Higuain pulls strings in midfield and Michael Parkhurst anchors the back isn’t a bad start.

4. Toronto: We have big names, yes we do. We have big names, how about you? Michael Bradley, Jozy Altidore, Robbie Findley, actual Italian international Sebastian Giovinco. Can the rest of the roster produce?

5. Montreal: The worst team in MLS last season just beat Pachuca in CONCACAF. That’s like Leicester City knocking Milan out of the Champions League. Argentine DP Ignacio Piatti gets a full season with the Impact, and the CONCACAF win proves Frank Klopas might be some sort of wizard. Can the defense hold?

6. Philadelphia: Jim Curtin will have an opportunity to solidify a solid core — Maurice Edu, Cristian Maidana, Sebastian Le Toux and the returning Conor Casey. They’ve added Benfica defender Steven Vitoria. But they just seem to be a few pieces away.

7. Chicago: Must learn to spell David Accam (Ghana international) and Kennedy Igboananike. They’re new Designated Players. They have good young-ish talent in GK Sean Johnson and Harry Shipp, and they have 2003 U17 world champion Adailton in defense with Jeff Larentowicz. Massive turnover — it’ll take a few weeks to get a feel for this team. In Frank Yallop we trust.

8. Orlando: Never easy to be an expansion team, but they’ve got Donovan Ricketts, Kaka, Brek Shea and Aurelien Collin added to some carryovers from their USL days. Playoffs might be difficult. Respectability? I think so.

9. NYC FC: Still wrapping my head around the fact that this team is actually going to play. It smells of Chivas USA Mark II. They’ll supplant D.C. United in the “team that desperately needs a stadium” spot. They have Jason Kreis coaching, which is good. They’ll have splashy signings in David Villa and (eventually, we think) Frank Lampard.

10. New York: Thierry Henry retired, and then Ali Curtis came in and immediately dismantled a pretty good team. Sure, they have Sacha Kljestan now, but I’m ranking them last out of principle.

My post today at SoccerWire asks a provocative question: Is North American pro soccer headed toward Armageddon?

“No, probably not” is a reasonable answer, but I humbly suggest the post is worth reading anyway. Pro soccer (and I’ll clarify: in this case, I’m just talking about men) has a lot of moving parts at the moment. The lower divisions are in their usual state of upheaval, this time with two entities going head-to-head with contrasting visions, and MLS is clinging to the remnants of its 1996 business model in a way that might leave it weaker. And I didn’t even mention indoor soccer, which has had some interesting characters this year, or the new iteration of the American Soccer League.

But all of these entities have been polite, more or less. This is not the open warfare of the “Soccer War” of the 1920s, where leagues and the federation were trying to bring each other to heel. Everyone says the U.S. soccer pie is big enough for everyone to share. And they might be right.

To show how these semi-competing entities could work, let’s rewind 15-20 years:

In the mid-90s, I was a Carolina Dynamo fan. My favorite player was Yari Allnutt, one of the few players you’ll ever see who can get away with a deft flick past his own ear at the top of the box and a mid-game mini-speech to the crowd to get them more involved. They also had a few bruisers, most notably Scott Schweitzer. He played alongside Tommy Tanner and Curt Johnson, still names to know in the pro soccer world, on an N.C. State team that would do all manner of evil off the ball. In a Dynamo game, Schweitzer once walked alongside an opponent leaving the scene of a nasty incident, then threw himself to the ground as if he had been punched in the face. Good times.

When the Dynamo dropped out of the second-division A-League, Allnutt and Schweitzer joined the Rochester Rhinos and started alongside Tanner on the underdog team that won the 1999 U.S. Open Cup — the last non-MLS side to do so.

A year later, the Rhinos were less fortunate in the Open Cup, losing early to D.C. United. I covered the game and went into the Rhinos locker room to chat with Allnutt and Schweitzer (neither of whom knew me, though I had introduced myself once to Allnutt). I asked Schweitzer why the talented, gritty players on the Rhinos weren’t playing in MLS.

He looked straight at me and wasted no time in answering: “Because MLS isn’t paying what we deserve.”

And MLS players had little leverage at that time. They couldn’t form a union while a suit filed by players in 1997 was slowly working its way through the courts.

So the second division at that time worked pretty well to keep MLS on its toes. They had backed away from the notion of A-League teams being MLS affiliates — Allnutt was called up to Kansas City in 1996 and scored one goal in 45 minutes of action. They were scoring a few wins over MLS clubs in the Open Cup, and Rochester was averaging more than 10,000 fans a game.

It didn’t last. From a height of 30 teams in the late 90s, the A-League dwindled to 16 teams in 2004. The league still had some talent — top players included former MLS All-Stars Alex Pineda Chacon and Dante Washington, along with a young forward named Alan Gordon. But a lot of teams either self-relegated or folded.

Renamed the USL First Division, the league started to get swamped by MLS expansion, which swallowed up Seattle, Portland, Vancouver and Montreal. By then, ambitions were all over the place, and a split was inevitable.

Out of all this was born the NASL.

And to some extent, the NASL is now doing what the old A-League did — keep MLS teams on their toes. They would dearly love to follow the Rhinos’ footsteps and take the Open Cup. And if MLS teams fail to find a place for someone like Miguel Ibarra, an NASL team will be happy to take him.

Meanwhile, the USL and MLS have done something clever, essentially merging what was left of the USL’s pro ranks and the MLS Reserve League. Makes sense, right? More teams, fewer travel costs, and it’s common in other countries around the world (except England).

So all is well, right? Well …

First off, there is a bit of muddying of the waters in progress, and I’m not sure that is a good thing. And while the NASL has, by all accounts, a fine relationship with MLS, it’s not just the fans who are pushing it not just as a second division nipping at MLS’s heels but a viable alternative.

I spoke with Kartik Krishnaiyer, who worked for the NASL for a couple of years. He saw a change in the league’s approach: “I think everything changed at NASL the day the Cosmos
joined. We went from being focused on stabilizing second division, something badly needed in the domestic game, to suddenly thinking we were in the same league as MLS. When Bill Peterson took over as Commissioner, the attitude became hardened about ‘the other guys’ and the hostility became more overt.”

And with USL’s latest rebranding, we may have national leagues competing head-to-head as “Division II” leagues. NASL and USL are already competing in several senses — this move would just formalize things.

It’s a little strange to see so much interest in divisional sanctions. Peterson says “divisions” don’t really make sense in a country without (UPDATE: corrected from “with”) promotion and relegation, and he has a point. That said, even a cursory glance at the rosters, facilities and attendance of the three USSF-sanctioned leagues would tell you which belongs to which divisions.

At least, it will, as long as MLS doesn’t get complacent. Which leads to this point …

Second, having a second division (or another league) keeping MLS on its toes only works if MLS reacts. But they’re digging in on free agency, saying clubs won’t bid against each other, even as the “haves and have nots” feud in public about Designated Player contracts.

Let’s be clear — NASL hard-cores are some of the most tedious people on social media. You say “business plan designed to bring stability to North American soccer at long last,” they say “conspiracy designed to make NFL owners even richer.” In the name of traditional soccer, they’ve hitched their wagon to a new-ish league that revived the brand of the least traditional soccer league that ever played (not counting any League One America exhibitions). The old NASL had shootouts, a bonus point for each of the first three goals a team scored, Bugs Bunny, and artificial turf that makes today’s FieldTurf look like Wembley Stadium after two weeks of ideal grass-prepping weather. But they at least say they’d like to start the discussion on promotion and relegation.

Notice that we don’t see a lot of concrete proposals on pro/rel. Certainly not while they’re pushing for stadiums to be built. Might not want to tell a stadium investor that the club might be in the third division, and not just because U.S. Soccer said so.

So to wrap up this ramble: The three-league system should work. The NASL can play the role the A-League used to play, picking off players that MLS clubs have undervalued and gunning for upsets in the Open Cup, all the while forcing MLS to make smart decisions and perhaps even spend a bit of money on players. The USL can expand pro soccer’s footprint and give fans in towns like Wilmington (my former home!) a few games against those hotshot reserves from MLS clubs.

But this triangle, like any love triangle in a soap opera, has the potential to get messy.

(And I’m going to have another proposal for revamping the whole system later in the week. I apparently enjoy spitting into the wind.)