Maybe We Should Stop Calling Student Athletes Kids.

The 2015 NCAA Men's College Basketball Tournament wrapped up last night, with the Duke Blue Devils walking away with shards of a net, a new floor if they want it, and the satisfaction of a successful championship season being completed.

And they'll head either back to class or off to prepare for the next phase of their lives (even if that seems to annoy the senior Senator from Missouri for some reason. But that's another post.).

I consume a lot of sports media. Not as much as I used to, because I just have more important things to do, but more than a sane person probably should. And with my interest/expertise being in the realm of the college experience and intercollegiate athletics, I spend a lot of time reading about and listening to people blabber about college athletes.

I constantly hear sportswriters, analysts and commentators refer to the young men and women as "kids".

It irks me, to be quite honest.

I've spent over half my life at this point on or around college students—as an undergrad, a grad student, an intern and a full-time staff member at eight institutions of higher education. I've worked at private schools, public schools and now (as of two weeks ago) at a community college.

Even when I worked exclusively with first year students at a predominantly residential institution, I never called the students "kids". Or at the very least, I have always tried to avoid that nomenclature.

Personally, I find it to be patronizing. I also think it establishes a bad precedent by marginalizing the subjects that we are supposed to be writing and talking about.

I use the term student-athletes. Or student. Or young men and women. Young adults.

You get the idea.

One reason is because, well, that's what they are. They are young men and women. They are young adults. In most cases, unless they are under the age of 18, they have a series of rights that are granted to them because of their age.

And if the expectation is that we want student athletes to act like adults, then isn't it incumbent upon us to treat them as such?

I realize that for some in the sports media, the students they are covering are young enough to be their children. And maybe that shades some of the thought process and use of terminology.

I also don't expect this post to make much of an impact. It might be more expository than anything else. Trust me; there are much greater issues in intercollegiate athletics that need to be addressed and discussed.

But I wanted to offer some perspective as to why you won't see that term in my writing.