Manti Te'o Story Over Hyped?

Honestly, when i first heard about the Manti Te'o story, I was completely insulted as a student journalist. I found the story absurd and completely not worthy of as big of a story as ESPN and the whole country made it.. In my opinion, it was a disgrace to what sports news is, or any news rather. We are taught the term "CATNIPP," which stands for conflict, audience, timeliness, novelty, impact, proximity, and prominence. The Te'o story didn't meet two of those, which were impact and prominence. As a story, It had no impact on society and didn't affect the average person's daily life. So I asked myself how is this news? Then, if you look at the story prominence wise, there really is no importance it has?
As a journalist, you are taught about what is news worthy and what isn't news worthy. You ask yourself questions like; Why should someone care about this, or why is this important information people should know? My point is that a story has to have some value of some sort; and this to me had no impact on my life, and I was never interested in Manti Te'os personal life. The fact that they (ESPN and all other stations) made a huge media frenzy out of the fact Manti Te'o had an internet girlfriend was just ridiculous to me. What's the big deal? Online dating has been around for years, this is nothing new!
The fact that it was a hoax isn't news either, because everyone knows the risks of Online dating. It's almost common sense to not trust Online dating sites like Match.com or EHarmony, because you never know who you are talking to these days. Bottom line, the story was blown way out of proportion and like I said; from a journalists stand point it makes me angry that the media gets by with hyping stories that have no news value like this. What has happened to the media? It scares me to see what will happen in the future if this is the path we are on.