Pam Oliver admits she will miss the action, the fans, and the security guards who sneak her into secret rooms to drink coffee or hot cocoa, but the 53-year-old who will wrap up her 20th and concluding year as Fox Sports' primary sideline reporter for the NFL, confesses that the only thing she won't miss is the cold weather that goes with the job. People would send me battery-operated socks," she even said.
Although, when Fox first offered the reporter a comfortable job position conducting major interviews and writing in-depth stories instead of roving the field, Oliver was not yet prepared to be put in the sidelines. She requested Fox to give her another season and the company yielded.
The co-host of "Dancing With the Stars", Erin Andrews, will be taking Oliver's spot on the network's No. 1 game-calling team along with Joe Buck and Troy Aikman, while Oliver will be moved to the No. 2 crew, alongside Kevin Burkhardt and John Lynch.
"I just felt like my 19th year was such a train wreck, starting with getting a concussion," she admitted, after being hit in the face with a football during the warm-up of a pregame. "I didn't want to go out on that note."
Oliver said that while she's "having a blast" in her farewell tour, she said that she would also like to have the chance to say her goodbyes to her old friends and soak up the stadium scenes that she may never visit once more. "I take more fan pictures than I do pictures with me and fans," she said. "I love to see how people just lose their minds." Meanwhile, she's "continuing to process that there's an expiration date - that this is going to be over."
Fans can catch her last regular-season game on December 28 at 1 p.m. EST as the Dallas Cowboys visit the Washington Redskins. Oliver will work the playoffs as well.
"The one thing people don't understand is if you're not on camera, you're still working your butt off," Oliver admitted. "I call it a three-hour track meet. It's hard work. But then you see the joy when these guys score a touchdown or they stop somebody on the goal line and the part of you that loves the game, that's kind of a fan, you're like, 'That was fantastic.'"
When her season is finished, Oliver will officially become Fox Sports' first senior reporter. She is happy and satisfied with her new multiyear contract and is more than ready to undertake the story ideas that she has been putting together over the years. On the fall of 2015, she said that on Sundays, "I'm promising myself to do all the things that you wish you could do on the weekends - antiquing, going to lunch with girlfriends, cleaning out my closet or garage. But if it's a good game, I'm going to watch."
