Most of the athletes dragged our way for questioning fled the scene at the first lull in the conversation. One notable and charming exception was the four members of the U.S. Olympic softball team in attendance, who sat down, formal gowns and all, in the press dining room and dined on Caesar salad while trying to explain their efforts to get the sport reinstated to the Games.

The event, I realized in hindsight, is clearly better fodder for the visual media. The camera crews, shutterbugs, and paparazzi clicked and whirred furiously, trying to investigate and memorialize Maria Sharapova’s cleavage. Meanwhile, I was wracking my brain trying to think of questions for Annika Sorenstam, for whom the room had gone silent after four or five queries.

And it was hard. The mood wasn’t right to ask, “Who was better at 15, you or Michelle Wie?” or, “Who would win in match play right now, you or David Duval?” The setting was inorganic, the hipness forced, and anyone needed only to take a single look at Stuart Scott to know that the night was about sponsors more than sports, a victory of style over substance.

Throughout my time covering Harvard sports last year, the journalistic scenes may have been lacking for famous faces or nationally televised characters, but the athletic endeavors and the questions that followed always seemed real, even if low on the food chain.

The ESPYs, on the other hand, lacked that authenticity.

But I’m not complaining. Jessica Biel is hot.

—Staff writer Jonathan Lehman can be reached at jlehman@fas.harvard.edu.