What if it was the Spartanettes vs. the Gamehens?

With both the men’s and women’s NCAA basketball tournaments under way now, a lot of college names and nicknames get bandied about.

But it brings to mind a practice I dislike, which is the feminizing of the women’s team nicknames, such as the Tennessee Lady Vols, the Alabama State Lady Hornets, the Georgia Lady Bulldogs. What’s wrong with being a plain old Volunteer, Hornet, or Bulldog? There are female volunteers, hornets, and bulldogs, after all. And why the namby-pamby “lady” anyway?

It is interesting to note that the vast majority of schools that choose such names are in the South.

Some schools get cute with it – at USC the men’s and women’s teams are Trojans and Women of Troy; Kenyon College in Ohio has the Lords and Ladies; Wyoming has Cowboys and Cowgirls; and then there’s the Central Missouri Mules and Jennies.

One women’s athletic program really needs to rethink their choice: the Lady Rams (huh?) of Winston-Salem State.

Except for Penn State’s Lady Lions (a league newcomer), the women athletes at schools in my favorite conference don't have a problem being called Spartans or Badgers or Fighting Illini or even Boilermakers.

It also does not appear to bother the women of SUNY-Buffalo to be called Bulls.

The subject gets touchy when it comes to my alma mater, however. It was in 1927 that the first athletic director and coach at Western Illinois University, a former Marine, started calling the football team the Fighting Leathernecks. I really can’t blame the women for rejecting that. But what they came up with for the women’s teams – speaking of namby-pamby – was the Westerwinds. That’s way too whimsical for a sports team. It makes me think of a gentle breeze off the Mississippi River, not a force to be reckoned with.

Even the Prevailing Westerlies has more oomph than that.

Michigan State's women play Northern Iowa tonight.  Go State.