IN LEHMAN'S TERMS: Style Over Substance

She was looking so right in her diamonds and frills

It was looking so right it was giving him chills

Trust my mother to think of me first.

When standout Harvard winger Nicole Corriero ’05 was nominated in the Best Female College Athlete category for the annual ESPY Awards, most people I told about it reacted with bewilderment or apathy or a simple dismissive smile. I had the privilege of covering Corriero all winter as she racked up a Division I single-season record 59 goals and led the Crimson to the national title game. Her nomination, though an impressive acknowledgment from one of the definitive sports authorities in ESPN, seemed a mere footnote to a historic season.

My mom saw it as an opportunity. For me.

It was only a “Well, you should go...” but her suggestion planted the seeds of ambition and summoned visions of tony parties and journalistic successes.

So, with just a week remaining before the taping of the show on July 13 in Los Angeles, I logged on to a simple website called espymedia.com and got bold. The process was as straightforward as entering my name and affiliation in a form and clicking submit. I figured it was a shot in the dark, a transparent fit of whimsy that would surely be dismissed. So you can imagine my surprise when a conformational e-mail hit my inbox twenty minutes later: “You have been approved for 1 credential.”

Before the day was done, I had negotiated the day off from work, made lodging arrangements with my roommate, and developed several fantasies of, well, you can imagine.

My generous parents bought me a round-trip ticket from the Big Apple to the City of Angels, and off I went.

Seeing as it was my first time on the West Coast (and my first time west of the Mississippi, for that matter), my first day in town gave the flavor of the city: I got ankle-deep in the Pacific, breathed in the palm trees and the smog, and got stuck in brutal traffic.

The next day was Showtime.

I met with Nicole briefly at the swanky hotel where she was staying to get her pre-show sentiments. Her measured excitement reminded me of my own, and I got a lift over to the Kodak Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard.

After navigating a traffic stop and a dizzying maze of barricades and consulting a half-dozen burly but friendly security guards, I finally found my way to the press tent at the foot of the red carpet to pick up my credential. The staffer begrudgingly handed it over; I don’t think she was expecting any profusely sweating eighteen-year-olds.

The red carpet itself was a shocking eddy of bejeweled humanity. Although the athletes and famous guests are separated from regular ticket-holders by a velvet rope, there wasn’t much preventing me from trying to sack Peyton Manning if I wanted to. Or if I thought I could bring him down.

Wide-eyed, I found a spot among the line of press and spent the next hour-plus agog at the whirlwind of celebrities and their girlfriends and their agents and their publicists.

I got to talk shop with ESPN personalities Chris Berman and Michael Wilbon.

Jessica Simpson bounced by.

Amare, T.O., D-Wade (styling an unfortunate fedora), McNabb, and Carmelo all strutted past.

Dick Enberg, under the sweltering sun, didn’t look a day over 120.

The members of the cast of HBO’s “Entourage” each had an entourage.

I made out with actress Jessica Biel.

(Not really, but that would have been sweet, right?)

The highlight of the pre-show fashion show may have come courtesy of the Florida-based TV crew stationed next to me along the perimeter of the ruby rug. They nabbed a small but well-built black gentleman—with what I can only describe as a retainer in his mouth made of little diamond studs—incredibly familiar-looking and clearly an athlete, for a two-minute interview.

“Who was that?” I asked the guy with the mic.

“I don’t know,” he shrugged.

Then the light bulb went on.

“That was Zab Judah, the welterweight champ,” I said.

“Whatever.”

I experienced more of this kind of inept reportorial posturing in the press room, which was not so much backstage as it was a prefabricated structure erected back of backstage.

A new low was reached when one chump, trying to clarify an inane question about Hollywood mixing with sports, asked Indy driver Danica Patrick why she was at the show. Confused, she put her arms up and scanned the room for help. He thought she was an actress, and slender-shouldered and pretty though she is, the mistake was unforgivable.

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.