Recently, I uncovered top-secret information from a group of unsuspecting females.

The topic: men.

The problem: Collegiate men are really collegiate boys.

I chuckled as they blasted guy after guy for acting “five years younger” than he really is.

I chuckled, of course, because it is true. Their complaint is legitimate and my gender is, generally, defenseless.

Age is a precarious agent to guys my age. We enjoy the pleasure of juvenile activities.

Nothing says male bonding like an intense game of NCAA Football on XBox. Gaming ability can be indicative of one’s personal worth.

You let me score 60 points on you? Do you want me to take your girlfriend to dinner as well?

At the same time, we wish to be treated as mature, ambitious and independent men. While not all of us know what our futures entail, we know we have a future, for better or worse.

Our maturity, we believe, comes not through action, but through numerical default. I am 21. That itself equals maturity. Pass the Capri-Sun and Cheerios.

On ambition, some guys invoke the principles of James Madison.

Madison, in The Federalist, advocated countering “ambition...with ambition.”

Modern men take this to heart. They do so much of nothing that it makes up for doing something.

And we are so independent we do not even have to load the dishwasher, take out the trash or unclog the shower that holds four inches of water with each use.

Only the imprisoned fasten themselves to the chains of cleanliness and order. How liberating is it to live in relative filth? Nothing says I am in control of my life like building a tower of dirty dishes.

Guys need not take offense. The guilty can most easily identify the sin.

Thankfully, the conversation I overheard omitted harsh commentary on the above confessions. Their complaints instead, not surprisingly, came in the way we interact with them.

The bottom line: Men are brave, but OU boys can be cowards.

No doubt this stung. But, again, the women spoke from experience.

Texting was quite a point of contention. My esteemed colleague in print and intellectual giant Eric Combs touched on this issue earlier in the semester. However, his pleas seem to have fallen on deaf ears.

No date requests over text messages, fellas. The girls, at least the ones I sampled without authorization, said grow a pair and call.

They understand the difficulty in maintaining a conversation, especially the first time you touch base on the phone. But this is one of those things that help us grow up and execute our self-professed maturity.

Next — no shocker — girls like guys with direction and a plan, with a kernel of hope (but not that Obamacized kind.)

Fellas, we hear the word ‘direction’ and think, “Man, I kind find anything on a map.” Herein lays the problem.

Females want the kind of direction that extends beyond the steering wheel.

We are in college. I do not have to spell it out for anyone. I, myself, can be just as oblivious to it as the next guy.

But, the good news is, all guys do, inherently, crave direction and possess shreds of it within their beer-battered skulls.

Even the guy who built his entire persona on being the guy with no direction has some kind of direction. For some reason, guys like to occasionally conceal their driven, serious sides.

Never would I profess to know for a second what girls want.

The revelation I was exposed to provided a mere crack in the window of the insatiable wants of females.

Women of OU, take solace in this: While guys have fallen down on the job, our capacity for suitability exists.

Sometimes we just hide it in the security of years gone by.