Did Gary Parrish cross a line with his column on Anthony Davis?

Big Blue Nation was spun into a tizzy on Tuesday afternoon, thanks to a column from Gary Parrish of CBSSports.com and a rip-job from Matt Jones of Kentucky Sports Radio, a former CBS writer.

Parrish, who writes a daily column for the website, chose the topic of Anthony Davis on Tuesday. If you remember -- and all of you reading this site should -- last summer the Chicago Sun-Times published a story that casually mentioned that the nation's No. 1 recruit in the class of 2011 was being "sold" for upwards of $200,000. Two days later, after getting universally ripped for mentioning rumors, the Sun-Times made the accusation the centerpiece of another article. Nothing was ever proven or confirmed, but the story was put out there by a reporter that, according to Dan Wolken (who was the Memphis beat writer at the time), had a major part of the Derrick Rose-SAT story before anyone but couldn't get the confirmation to publish it.


The point of Parrish's column is to question what kind of effects this scandal will have on Davis' freshman (only?) season at Kentucky. He doesn't confirm anything that was reported by the Chicago Sun-Times. He doesn't say he believes the report. He does say that the report "even if true, was thin."

As you can probably guess, this column got Matt Jones riled up, and he, in turn, set Big Blue Nation's sites on Parrish. Jones doesn't hold back on his former colleague, either, calling him an unethical hack and saying "journalism may not be dead, but if you just read Gary Parrish tonight, you might believe it."

If you can get past the name-calling, over-reaction, and sensationalizing in the KSR post, Jones actually does have a point:

"The title itself illustrates the passive-aggressive nature of Parrish’s article to come. He wants to distance himself from any real accusation (and thus responsibility) and instead seeks cover by arguing he is only dealing with an issue outside of him, 'whether fair or not.'"

And while Jones is right in that this story has not been heavily discussed in the past 11 months, that doesn't mean that people have forgotten about it.

The point of Parrish's article is correct. Davis is going to be asked about receiving money over and over again. Opposing student sections are going to remind him about it every time the Wildcats play a road game. The beat writers and local news outlets of the teams that play Kentucky are going to have stories on Davis and these rumors prior to facing the Wildcats. That is going to happen, and a column from Gary Parrish in the middle of July is going to do nothing to change that fact.

If you want to believe that Parrish simply wrote this column because he was looking for a traffic bump from BBN, feel free. But also keep in mind that its July -- where all the good and bad that comes with recruiting at this level is rampant -- and that a story about how a scandal stemming from what happens during July is about as relevant as any article talking about how Jared Sullinger losing weight will affect his 2011-2012 campaign.

Wildcat fans are probably right to be paranoid about reporters taking shots at their program. They are right that Calipari is "the White Whale", the guy that every journalist wants to bring down.

That said, this column from this particular reporter was far from unethical and certainly didn't break any standard of journalism.

And for what its worth, if Kentucky fans are so concerned with ethics and professionalism, they may want to question why one of their program's Sports Information Director's tweeted this out last night: