I can see that maybe the announcers will find some time to talk about this, but they'll talk about anything ... I guess it's a bad look, but they'd be totally remiss if they didn't talk about the team's current academic success stories, either.
I also think grapevine information has flowed since forever. I know it did during the Solich years, throughout the Callahan years, through the Bo years (on both sides -- there were 'insiders' fighting a dogged battle on Bo's behalf on message boards, as the heat turned up), and no different now.
Regarding published academic status, it sounds like this is something Riley himself has been saying -- last I saw, he was saying that they were waiting to hear back results still for everybody, but what they've heard so far has been positive. In this case, I think the HC is just answering questions about his team and being upfront that some players have status questions that need answering.