Whitey Reid sings the blues

Everybody reads Gary Parrish's Poll Attacks. It's one of the few "absolute-weekly-must-reads" in the college basketball blogosphere.

I may never get to the point where I am able to vote in the AP top-25 poll, but I will at least know who Gary Parrish is.

Why do I bring this up?

Only because apparently there is a Division-I college basketball beat reporter who does not know who Gary Parrish is, or what the "Poll Attacks" are.

His name is Whitelaw (Whitey) Reid, and he is the Virginia Cavaliers beat reporter for the Charlottesville Daily-Progress.

You see, Parrish ripped Reid in his most recent Poll Attacks, and I guess Reid got a bit offended. Well I take that back. Reid wasn't offended that he got ripped, he just didn't understand why he was getting ripped.

Reid didn't have Tennessee in the top 25. That's an issue in and of itself, but Parrish handled it in the Poll Attacks.

What irks me more is the fact that Reid states he didn't know who Gary Parrish is.

How the hell is that possible?

Look, Gary has a big enough head already. The last thing I want to do is build make his ego any bigger. But Parrish is one of the best, most established college hoops writers in the country. Before he took the job as CBSSports.com's lead college basketball columnist, he spent five years as the Memphis Tiger's beat reporter for the Memphis Commercial-Appeal. The same Memphis team that was coached by John Calipari. Parrish also is known for scooping the "Albert Means Recruiting Scandal" that made Alabama's Logan Young the first booster in NCAA history to be sentenced to prison for essentially buying a prospect.

Now I know that in the age of monopolizing sports news outlets it is entirely possible for somebody to get all their sports news from the World Wide Leader. After all, I did this for a good number of years before I became a true college hoops junkie and started to branch out.

But I don't get to vote for the AP top 25.

Our buddy Whitelaw does. I have to judge Whitelaw's newsgathering skills if he works in college basketball media world and doesn't know who Gary Parrish is.

Maybe he's just lucky that Parrish knows who he is: