If you care about words and meaning, March Madness should make you crazy.

One practice that continues to be repeated during the otherwise exciting basketball tournament is the unnecessary use of the term “Lady” in front of the nickname of many team names when the women play.

You’ve got the men’s teams – the Bears, the Volunteers, the Badgers, and the Gamecocks.

Then the women take the floor and the media or the teams’ own schools label them thusly: The Lady Bears, the Lady Vols, the Lady Badgers and, unfortunately, the Lady Gamecocks.

Why aren’t the women allowed to own their teams’ names the same as the men? Or to put it another way, if the women are the ladies, why aren’t the men called the Gentlemen Bears?

Partly, it’s because it would sound ridiculous. It’s time to retrain our ears and treat the women as if they have as much right to own the team’s name as the men.

Everyone acknowledges that women and men play the game somewhat differently. Nearly everyone will say that women are morally or legally entitled to participate equally in sports. Title IX has been federal law since 1972 and I would wager that today virtually all parents of daughters, and most parents of boys, believe females should be able to compete in any sport they want.

Whenever we get a chance, we should object to the unequal access to team names – or at least remind our children that boys and girls – and men and women – all have the right to refer to themselves just as the Bears, the Badgers and, for better or worse, the Gamecocks.