Scholars' thoughts on why college coaches call their athletes 'kids'

When the University of Texas football team qualified for a bowl game, which it will play on New Year's Day against the University of Georgia, Longhorns head coach Tom Herman declared: "We've got confident kids in that locker room."

When UT men's basketball coach Shaka Smart spoke about the Texas program's history of producing NBA players, he said: "It sounds basic, but kids need an understanding that you can do it here."

And when Georgia football coach Kirby Smart discussed his team's ability to bounce back emotionally after losing the Southeastern Conference championship game to the University of Alabama and therefore an opportunity to get into the national semifinals, he put it this way: "These kids recover faster than you think they do."

Kids? College athletes in nearly all cases are at least 18 years old. That's old enough to fight in wars and vote. Some of these athletes stand well over 6 feet and weigh more than 300 pounds. And yet college coaches across the nation routinely refer to them as kids.

Some scholars consider the use of "kids" as a benign, affectionate reference, but others see a darker narrative behind the term, a notion that athletes competing in such big-time college sports as football and men's basketball should not be paid.

"Yes, they are adults, but young adults in a special kind of phase in college, not fully adult people," said Suzanne Kemmer, an associate professor of linguistics at Rice University in Houston. "Maybe coaches are even more likely to call their charges kids because there's almost a family bond there. Those college athletes not only don't have money or power, they're expected to have some kind of loyalty and affection. There's a control differential also."

Stephen M. Wechsler, a professor of linguistics at UT, agreed that the use of "kids" reflects a somewhat paternalistic or maternalistic view. "The coach is sort of the authority figure relative to the team," he said. "The coach gets a little in trouble if the team misbehaves. Coaches kind of see it as their role to exert authority over their players.

"Certain words — and kid is one of them — have two meanings," Wechsler added. "One refers to relatives and one refers to younger humans. People talk about their 'kids' even if they're grown. It sounds like coaches are using it in the relational sense."

Ellen Staurowsky, a professor of sport management at Drexel University in Philadelphia, has a more critical view.

"I don't think that the word 'kid' is as beneficent as it appears to be," Staurowsky said. "I could not imagine walking in and referring to a classroom of students at the college level as being kids. To me they may be young in experience or development, but they are fully formed human beings who should be recognized for what they bring to the table, which is a tremendous amount of insight."

Staurowsky contends that college athletes in the big-money sports should be compensated far beyond the cost of attendance. Words matter, she said.

"By taking young men who are intelligent, who have the capacity to make significant life decisions, and to cast them in the role of being people who have to be taken care of by adults — I think that that feeds into a perception that they shouldn't be paid, that they're not worthy of being paid," Staurowsky said.

And yet these athletes provide the labor from which a multibillion-dollar industry of advertisers, TV networks, sports gear companies and gambling entities profit, and thus are unlike other students or even any other group of workers in the United States, Staurowsky said.

Thomas Palaima, a professor of classics at UT, said he also believes that college athletes should be paid and that the use of "kids" distracts from their quasi-professional status. Palaima previously represented UT and the Big 12 Conference on the Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics, an advisory and monitoring group of faculty members. 

"I don't think the public relations people go to the coaches in big-time sports and tell them it would be expedient to call them kids," Palaima said. "But by the time those players become part of the top 100 teams, they are no longer kids. I think in many ways they've had their childhoods taken away from them long before they set foot at UT or other big-time schools."

Richard E. Petty, a professor of psychology at Ohio State University, said he sees "definite ambiguity" in the use of "kids."

"There is the possibility of some sort of implicit bias being present, but it can also be much more benign," Petty said. "For example, I still refer to my daughters as my 'kids' or my 'children' rather than as my 'young adults.' So, to some extent, one can see this as coaches seeing their players as part of a 'family' in which they are the dad or mom. Coaches talk about how much they 'love' their players, another sort of family reference. Nonetheless, the use of the term 'kids' could have an impact on how the players see themselves, though here, too, there are both positive and negative connotations."

Coaches and their 'kids'

UT women's basketball coach Karen Aston after her team's loss to Baylor this past March in the Big 12 championship game following an ill-timed technical foul on her part: "As I always have told the kids, I don't think one play costs games."

UT football defensive coordinator Todd Orlando saying in November that he cannot make wholesale defensive changes heading into the Big 12 championship matchup against Oklahoma: “Our kids would look at us like we’re crazy."

Harvard football coach Tim Murphy on his confidence level in September regarding two players well-equipped to quarterback the team: "Both kids are armed with talent.

Rice University football coach Mike Bloomgren in September on his team's intellectual style of play: "We’re trying to run a West Coast offense with a lot of volume to it and really give our kids answers going to the line of scrimmage."

Ohio State University football coach Urban Meyer referring in October to kicker Blake Haubeil: "There's a thump when he hits that thing. What a great kid, too."