It may be a cheesy North American name, but it's our cheesy North American name

Common sense has prevailed. The Vancouver Whitecaps will remain the Vancouver Whitecaps when they enter MLS in 2011. Now, we wait for a similar statement from Portland, and all will be good.

With the 'Caps now a sure thing, it brings the total amount of MLS teams using the old names up to three (Earthquakes, Sounders and Whitecaps), with the Timbers very likely to make it four.

Of course, the TOA breakaway group also seems set on calling its league the NASL, so it appears that nostalgia is at a peak.

Good. Although there are some that insist that it is a mistake to label teams and leagues with the names of the past -- a failed past in many cases -- it's important to hold onto tradition in football, one of the most tradition laden sports in the world.

Yes, the NASL failed in 1984, but it was successful for a goodly few years in the late '70s. It's legacy was the millions of kids that spent Saturday morning chasing a black and white chequered ball around the local (gridiron) football field in the '80s. Many of those kids, then in college, made road trips to watch the 1994 World Cup and, then, two years later scraped together their pennies to buy season tickets to the fledgling MLS. Today, they still stand in those stadiums, sometimes with their children beside them, as they go through life as the first generation of native-born North American soccer (and I use that word purposely) fans. From wide-eyed child to grumpy old man, they will live their life following and understanding the beautiful game.

That's the legacy of the NASL and that's why there is nothing wrong with giving a nod to the past every now and than.

The history of the sport here in North America is different than it is in Continental Europe and the UK. We simply don't have the ability to track club teams back through 100 plus years of history. However, we do have 100 plus years of history to look back at. It's been a sputtering history, with ebbs and flows, stops and starts, but it's our history. When someone in Toronto talks about TFC being a young team they are, of course, correct. However, to me, the history of TFC goes back much further than 2007. It stretches through the Lynx and the CSL Blizzard, the NASL glory years, including the 1976 Soccer Bowl champion Metros-Croatia, and it finishes with Toronto City and beyond. It's all one , if occasionally broken and often erratic, line.

In the past MLS has tried to shy away from the NASL. Let's hope that bad habit is done now. Yes, the Cosmos crumbled, taking the league with them, but there was a lot to like about what they did.

And what they put in motion.