Jason Collins came out as the first openly gay professional athlete almost a year ago. And yet, as Collins toils through the dregs of an NBA season as a mediocre bench player for the Brooklyn Nets, major media outlets continue to follow him intently, waiting to seize any decent performance for their daily news fodder.

Collins was signed to a 10-day contract on February 24, just two weeks after NFL Draft prospect Michael Sam came out. The stories should be old news by now.  But lo and behold, the two men are still being covered today.

Society today is controlled by the media, I get it. If the major networks and websites want to talk night in and night out about two gay men playing alongside the best athletes in the world, that’s their right. But most everyone outside the media has grown tired of the narrative. Collins and Sam realized what they were getting themselves into when they came out, but why does the media feel the need to make these two men almost regret their decisions with the incessant, nonstop coverage they receive?

People want to hear the feel-good stories of Collins and Sam, but only to a point. When the story becomes more about filling a time slot than covering a major movement in professional sports, the story loses its meaning and begins to feel repetitive and bland.

This flurry of activity relating the LGBTQ community to the sports world wasn’t anything surprising. It was bound to happen eventually, that a professional athlete would come out as gay, and it was something that should happen.

But the issue arises when the story-hungry paparazzi come chasing after a story as juicy as that of a gay professional athlete and blow it out of proportion. Every media source is guilty of it, ESPN, NBC, ABC, you name ‘em, they’ve covered them. The issue with the media coverage is that it becomes about the player’s sexual orientation, not his ability. Sure, talk about the fact that he’s gay, and that’s a big breakthrough in professional sports history, but then let it go.

When the coverage continues for days on end, as these companies try to make something out of nothing, it is no longer coverage of a team signing a player to help them produce wins- it’s about the fact that a team signed a gay player, and therefore the media must milk the story for all it’s worth.

The big media juggernauts have seen an opportunity that can’t be passed up, and despite the risks to the players they are covering, they continue to exploit the fact that there is a gay player in professional sports. The health of the player doesn’t matter, they go for the throat and take all meaning away from the event through excessive coverage.

Unnecessary media attention could have an even longer-lasting impact for Sam as he prepares for the upcoming NFL Draft in May. The possibility that excessive media attention could scare suitors away from Michael Sam in the upcoming 2014 NFL Draft is a legitimate concern. Why would any team want to draft a player who would bring unparalleled media attention into a professional locker room?

Not only does this excessive media coverage sometimes exasperate sports fans like me, but it begs the question of how much it weighs on the athletes as well. After announcing that he was gay, an inspirational feat in and of itself, Sam turned in a comparatively subpar bench press and 40-yard dash time at the NFL Combine, leading one to wonder: Was he hurt by the feeling that he needed to perform extra-well at the Combine to combat added media pressure?

Sam is projected as a fourth or fifth round pick, but seems to be talked about like a first round pick. For comparison, potential first overall pick Jadeveon Clowney gets less media attention than Sam. Something about that just isn’t right.

Since signing that first contract, Collins has largely flown under the radar, just the way it should be. As for Sam, we’ll have to wait and see how the media handles its second opportunity with an openly-gay athlete. Hopefully they’ve learned that one’s sexuality doesn’t matter- if someone can play then they can play, and that’s it. No need to make a big deal out of it.