It’s offi­cial: Bank of Amer­ica, which recently aquired Fleet­Boston (pre­vi­ously known as Bank­Boston, pre­vi­ously known as Bank of Boston, first known as First National Bank of Boston circa 1784), has relin­quished its nam­ing rights to the Fleet­Cen­ter. As I pre­dicted, the final nail in the cof­fin may have been a rare vic­tory for focus groups: the shock­ing dis­cov­ery that sports fans are unwill­ing to artic­u­late the com­plete phrase “Bank of Amer­ica Cen­ter” again and again.

The Boston Globe goes on to spec­u­late on poten­tial suit­ors for nam­ing rights to the arena. CVS, Reebok, and Sta­ples were appar­ently con­sid­er­ing it. But what were they think­ing? For an arena to rep­re­sent its locale, it has to have a “local” name. I’m not a big fan of corporate-branded ath­letic facil­i­ties, but at least Fleet­Boston was a Boston com­pany and every­body knew it. Could they really call it the “Sta­ples Center?”

Well, to my sur­prise, there already is a “Sta­ples Cen­ter.” As you prob­a­bly don’t know—I didn’t—Staples Inc. is based in Fram­ing­ham, MA. So nat­u­rally the Sta­ples Cen­ter is in Los Angeles.

I don’t under­stand why peo­ple are so com­fort­able with blur­ring the bound­aries between facil­ity names and their loca­tions. So much of being a sports fan is about com­mu­nity, and com­mu­ni­ties are so solidly linked to places. Per­haps, as a pro­gres­sive city, we should step up to the chal­lenge and re-name the Boston Celtics to the Adi­das Celtics, or some­thing along those lines. Then you could enjoy them any­where you wear shoes!