As I said when Jason Collins came out last spring, it pains me that this is a story in 2014. By this time, I had hoped an athlete’s sexual orientation wouldn’t matter anymore.

You would have to be naive to think that there haven’t been gay athletes in the locker rooms in all sports for many years. The recent NFL Network A Football Life documentary on Jerry Smith showed that his Washington teammates were aware that he was gay. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that the guy could play.

Deion Sanders had this tweet last night:

From Bears tight end Martellus Bennett.

Yet in 2014, it still is a major story. As of last night, more than avid football fans know about Michael Sam.

Cyd Zeigler, writing for Outsports at SB Nation, served as an advisor to Sam’s representatives on how to break the story. He wrote about the inside story.

Zeigler writes:

The second order of business was to determine where to break the story. Bragman knew the importance of this decision. For him, there was one determining factor: Who had earned it?

Howard already knew he wanted the TV element to be on ESPN. He has a working relationship with ABC, who shares a parent company — Disney — with ESPN.  He had worked with Chris Connelly before and respected his work, and he knew ESPN would treat Sam well. Plus, ESPN is a sports media outlet with a good track record on LGBT sports issues: The story had to be the football, the sport.

Bragman also wanted to include Outsports in the plan. He knew we would be talking “20 times a day” as this unfolded, and he wanted to give Outsports the “behind the scenes” story, the insight into how the story came about. No one else in the media would have been in the middle of strategy conversations, and it was a story Bragman felt needed to be told.

“Outsports has been light years ahead of any other publication on this topic,” he said. “And I think Outsports has earned it.”

As for the print side, Sam’s representatives eventually decided on John Branch of the New York Times.

“I know a lot of people will be pissed,” Bragman said. “There are a lot of friends in the media who won’t be happy because they didn’t get the story. And there will be lots of people trying to explain to me that we need to do the cover of their magazine. Part of the strategy is to announce it once, announce it well and let Michael focus on his football.”

Zeigler writes the timing of the announcement was pushed up because speculation was becoming rampant about Sam.

A sooner coming-out date had to be after the Super Bowl. Despite the Olympics starting Feb. 7, the announcement had to be early in the week of Feb. 10. While the Olympics would be taking up some space, everyone knew the story of the first soon-to-be NFL player to come out publicly would muscle its way through the Olympic headlines.

 “What really became clear was that it wasn’t going to hold until the Combine,” Bragman said. “Too many calls and too many journalists were sniffing around. So we decided to give the Super Bowl its chance to breathe, and we’d come in with a sneak announcement on Monday, Feb. 10.”

And finally.

For Sam and his team, the most important element to the entire process has been protecting Sam’s ability to tell his story himself first. It was that core tenet that dictated the decisions of where, when and how to break the story: Sam, not a reporter looking for some pageviews, had to tell his story on his terms.

It was with that in mind that the team moved up the release to Sunday night. Watching the reaction in the coming days will undoubtedly be overwhelming — And it will be overwhelmingly positive. Not only has the sports world changed dramatically on this issue, witnessed by Sam’s own experiences at Missouri, but Sam himself — A projected high NFL draft pick and SEC leader in sacks — is the perfect man to be the first.

“If we were choosing someone to be the first, we’d choose someone like Michael,” Bragman said. “Smart, athletic, handsome. I don’t think Central Casting could have come up with someone better.”

Connelly did a good job with the interview, and Sam was more than capable of answering the questions. Now the story moves to the NFL Combine, where he will encounter the media masses, and then finally to the NFL draft.