I've become much less of a fan of nostalgia lately, probably because what a lot of people call "nostalgia" are things that I experienced personally, and it doesn't seem all that long ago to me.

There are also times when nostalgia of any sort just leaves me cold - and this is one of them.

One of the more irritating things about the ongoing 50th Anniversary celebration of the eight original American Football League franchises is that the Patriots are apparently going to call themselves the "Boston Patriots" each time they play one of these "legacy games."

The first of those was Monday night at Gillette Stadium against the Buffalo Bills, who've never been anything but the Buffalo Bills, even when they play home games in Toronto.

I suppose it's a savvy bit of marketing to push the nostalgia angle as much as possible. It's a wonderful excuse to put all sorts of replica jerseys and other costly attire on the market - even if they did have to put those Richard Seymour No. 93 red jerseys on the clearance rack for 75 percent off last week. Still, I think it's a little silly for the teams to be reverting to their original names - especially since only one of those teams seems to be embracing it.

For instance, from the first moment that these "legacy games" were announced, I have yet to see one reference to the "Los Angeles Chargers," even though they spent the first year of their existence in LA before moving south to San Diego.

Maybe the league's a little sensitive to the fact that the Chargers, Rams and Raiders all couldn't make a go of it in the nation's No. 2 television market. It probably hasn't anything to do with the Chargers' failure to recognize the first year of their history, but clearly, they're not proud of it.

Ditto the Kansas City Chiefs, who started their football lives as the Dallas Texans, not to be confused with the Houston Texans, who aren't to be confused with the Houston Oilers, who are now the Tennessee Titans, not to be confused with the New York Titans, who became the New York Jets, and ... my head hurts. This is getting way too confusing.

In any event, my problem here is not with the surname. The Patriots are still the Patriots.

But this past Sunday, columnist Dan Shaughnessy of the Boston Globe took the opportunity to call for a permanent switch back to "Boston Patriots" for the team's name. Regardless of his Dan's gracious acknowledgement that he got a column out of one of my Blog Shows earlier in the year, the one about the view of the practice fields from the new Renaissance Hotel, I couldn't disagree with him more on this issue.

By now, everyone knows the story of how Billy Sullivan scraped together a few thousand dollars to get the last of the eight original AFL franchises. The Patriots were truly the stepchildren of Boston sports, forced to bounce from BU's Nickerson Field to Fenway Park to BC's Alumni Stadium to Harvard Stadium before they faced an NFL edict to find a permanent home or move.

The city of Boston turned its back on the Patriots in their hour of need, forcing Sullivan to turn to the suburbs to bail him out. Plans to build a retractable-dome stadium to house the Red Sox and Patriots near the site of the Neponset Drive-In died under the weight of patronage demands, but local business leaders and politicians managed to get the ball rolling for an underdeveloped parcel next to the harness racing track to become a bargain-basement stadium that would house the Patriots for 32 rocky years.

That was the first time the city snubbed the Patriots. The second time was much more recent.

As Victor Kiam was selling the team to St. Louis native James Busch Orthwein and Robert Kraft and Steven Karp were buying the stadium in U.S. Bankruptcy Court at the end of the 1980s, the big talk was that a "Megaplex" domed stadium and convention center to be built near where the Big Dig begins today would save the day for the Patriots. Even well into Kraft's ownership of the team, talk of the Megaplex was omnipresent. There was no more embarrassing press conference than the one in which Drew Bledsoe, barely at the start of his NFL career, was told by the ownership to shill for the Megaplex, saying how great it would be for him to play his entire career in it.

Of course, the Megaplex died a merciful death for the same reasons as the Neponset stadium, spiraling costs caused by the ungodly number of palms that would have to be greased to get the job done.

By that time, Kraft was willing to listen to anyone. One plan would have located the Patriots' stadium in South Boston, but community groups stood firm against it. Buddy Cianci tried to woo Kraft to a parcel of warehouses across from Providence Place, but the state refused to offer a dime in support of it. And of course, there was the spectacularly stupid offer of former Connecticut Gov. John Rowland to build a football palace on a polluted spit into the Connecticut River called "Adrien's Landing."

I'll never forget a conversation I had with former PR chief Don Lowery in the old Foxboro Stadium, when he said there was no way the Patriots would enter the 21st century playing in Foxboro. At the time, the Hartford deal was still on the table, but I looked out the window, pointed in the general direction of the dying racetrack next door and told Lowery, "No, Don, they'll be playing right over THERE."

My aim was a little off - Gillette Stadium (and remember when it was called "CMGi Field?") rose about 30 degrees more to the left - but my point was that Kraft would learn that when dealing with politicians of any city, he would eventually have to do things himself to get things done.

And you know what? As much as Foxboro has had to endure over the years, no one in the town has ever demanded that the team be called "the Foxborough (pretentious "-ugh" added for effect) Patriots."

But something like that was tried before, and Shaughnessy missed the boat on that.

The "Bay State Patriots" name that was originally stuck on the Patriots by Billy Sullivan and then-GM Upton Bell was primarily a means of establishing a regional identity for the Patriots, but it was also intended as a tip of the cap to E.M. Loew, the bankrupt owner of the harness racing track (then called the Bay State Raceway) for his "gift" of the land upon which Schaefer Stadium was built in return for a huge break on unpaid taxes.

That part of the story was supposed to remain hush-hush at the time, but I've had some pretty solid sources confirm that to me over the years, including some of the folks who were involved in the process at the time and, unfortunately, are no longer with us.

There was also a pretty significant backlash about any suggestion that the team's name have anything to do with a harness racetrack or the gambling industry, hence the birth of the "New England Patriots." Over the years, the team has cultivated a regional identity, and that name has become far more appropriate.

"Boston" may be appropriate for the Red Sox, Celtics and Bruins (and I'll care about the Revolution when they're called "gone"), but for the Patriots? To me, Boston: a symbol of a miserable decade and more of crooked politics and spectacular on-field futility.

And that's why, in the stories I write during these "Legacy Games," they will remain the New England Patriots.

MARK FARINELLA may be reached at 508-236-0315 or via e-mail at mfarinel@thesunchronicle.com. Read Farinella's blog, "Blogging Fearlessly," at thesunchronicle.com/farinella.