High-profile NRL personalities Gorden Tallis and Paul Kent have traded verbals blows over South Sydney's sexting scandal and whether Sam Burgess should be stood down by the NRL.

Tallis, who was inducted to the NRL's Hall of Fame earlier in 2018 and Kent, a journalist with The Daily Telegraph and Fox League, teed off at each other in an exchange that was unmistakably serious.

Burgess, who is at the centre of the controversy, is believed to be the owner of the social media accounts used to make inappropriate gestures towards a 23-year-old woman.

Kent said there was a possibility Burgess would be stood down from the Rabbitohs' blockbuster Saturday night preliminary final against long-standing rivals the Roosters over the incident, with an investigation currently ongoing between both the NRL Integrity Unit and the Rabbitohs.

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A decision is expected to be made on Burgess' punishment early in the week.

Tallis seemed to be agitated with the idea that Burgess could miss the bumper clash, asking if sending a nude "selfie" was against the law, and adding that in his opinion "the world has gone mad".

“Stand him down for a photo? Did he break the law?” Tallis said on Triple M's Sunday NRL show, which sparked the fiery exchange with his colleague Kent.

“Yep,” Kent said in response.

“Paul, we have a (Triple M) segment called Tinder. Who hasn’t sent a selfie?” Tallis said.

But Kent hit back.

“Gorden, it wasn’t a conversation of a sexual nature, from what I’m understanding. It was a FaceTime phone call to a fan. I think they’re vastly different," Kent said.

Tallis then seemed to get caught out by Kent.

The former Broncos captain said the woman should have brought an end to the conversation and cut off all contact with the players from that point on.

But Kent pointed out that that's exactly what the woman did.

“She did, she hung up immediately as soon as he exposed himself and then he tried to call back three times, she refused to take the call, and the following morning sent an email to the club saying that she was offended by it and she wanted an apology,” Kent added.

It was at that point that Tallis said: “I think the world has gone mad.”

“What is she doing on the Tinder account, what is she looking for?”

Kent then bluntly, and abruptly said to Tallis: "Shut up, you don't know what you're talking about."

While the naked photos are understood to have been sent from Burgess' social media accounts, it's unknown which South Sydney players were involved.

Kent even went as far as to say that the current South Sydney scandal is worse than the Mitchell Pearce dog incident which occurred back in January 2016.

“You talk about consistency, Mitchell Pearce is in a loungeroom, he’s drunk and skylarking, he picks up a dog and pretends as a bit of a joke to play with the dog, some guy is secretly filming it and he gets hit with $125,000 fine and a 12-week suspension later reduced to eight,” Kent said.

“I thought that was harsh, but in the ladder of atrocities, I think [the current Rabbitohs scandal] is worse.

“Mitchell Pearce was not naked, he had a right to believe he wasn’t being filmed. Certainly he acted silly, but he was just skylarking. That’s vastly different than being in a FaceTime phone call with a fan with a couple of your teammates there and dropping your trousers.”