Fox Sports sideline reporter Pam Oliver has worked more than 500 NFL games, more than any broadcaster. By Jeff Siner
She estimates she’ll walk three miles today, here, encircling the Bank of America Stadium turf, mining for moments and stories that will help make this FOX Sports broadcast come to life. Three miles is a guess, of course. She jokes she’s been “threatening” to wear a Fitbit “to anyone who will listen” for years. It’s two hours until kickoff of the Carolina Panthers-Cowboys contest in Charlotte, and one of the most enduring characters in all of football has already started moving.
“Mrs. Oliver!”
Pam Oliver turns. The man hails her down and says he saw her speak at a conference 10 years ago. She nods and smiles. As much as her pregame involves going up to Panthers quarterbacks Bryce Young and Andy Dalton, and touching base with various Cowboys assistants, and saying hello to Jerry Jones, the woman at least once referred to as the First Lady of Football is living up to such a distinction. She’s greeting the three generations of fans of the NFL who’ve seen her in their living rooms all their lives, listening to her in-game injury reports, her postgame interviews, her special interest pieces for 31 seasons and counting.
“I saw that she was covering this game,” said Da’Shawn Brown, a sports reporter for WSOC-TV, the ABC affiliate in Charlotte. Brown, right before she began broadcasting live, was one of the people to walk up to Oliver pregame. She couldn’t pass up the opportunity to tell her the impact she’s had on her career, she said.
“She was one of the first women I ever saw on television and who looked like me, doing what I wanted to do,” Brown said. “So that was huge because it helped me to see that it was possible.” When asked what moved her to tell that to Oliver, Brown shrugged: “Because she should know that. There are other women in this industry because of her. And seeing her do it at a high level for so long — she literally joked with me, saying, ‘Girl, come talk to me when you get to 30 years!’” Brown laughed. “I just said, ‘I’m trying! That’s the goal!’
FOX Sports sideline reporter Pam Oliver, left, speaks with WSOC-TV reporter DaShawn Brown right, prior to Sunday’s Carolina Panthers vs. Dallas Cowboys game. Oliver is the longest tenured NFL sideline reporter with more than 500 games. JEFF SINER jsiner@charlotteobserver.com
This is as much a part of the Oliver experience as anything else. Oliver, 64, joined Fox in 1995 and has worked there since. She was there as the sideline reporter with Pat Sumerral and John Madden. Sunday, she’s working with play-by-play guy Adam Amin and analyst Greg Olsen, who Oliver first interviewed when he was a rookie tight end with the Chicago Bears. She’s been inducted into so many Halls of Fame — the Florida Sports Hall of Fame (2022), the National Black Journalists Hall of Fame (2020) and the Florida A&M University Hall of Fame (1996) — that when prompted about her most recent honor, she chuckles at how ridiculous her forthcoming question will be but clarifies anyway: “Which one?”
The Hall of Fame she’s citing is the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame. She was named to it in September, and will officially be inducted into it in December. It’s a product of her longevity, of her preparedness, of her work ethic, of the fact that even though she never played in the league she is inextricably linked to it and forever will be.
In a quiet moment on Sunday, seated on a cushy Panthers chair next to a drizzled-on NFL bench, she’s asked about what there could possibly be left to accomplish in her career.
“I’m honest with myself, I ask myself that a lot,” Oliver tells The Charlotte Observer. “This can be a nice career-capper for what I’ve been able to do in broadcasting. It’s not far from my mind, all the time, about what’s next. And when to take advantage of the next opportunities. There will be another chapter.”
That other chapter could include doing more with the production company, Tomboy Productions, that her and her husband, Al Whitney, founded. Documentaries. Interview shows.
“I’ve been putting things into place for years,” Oliver said. “But the thrill of this job is hard to shake.”
FOX Sports sideline reporter Pam Oliver, left, speaks with Carolina Panthers quarterbacks Bryce Young and Andy Dalton, right, prior to Sunday’s game. JEFF SINER jsiner@charlotteobserver.com
The producer in Pam Oliver’s ear
When Oliver arrives to the stadium Sunday just past 10:30 a.m., she hops out of a pristine White Ford Expedition. Her “runner” for the evening, a lifelong Charlottean named Reggie, is there to greet her. She then walks to meet with Eric Mandia.
Mandia has been working with Oliver, one way or another, for 11 years. He’s the producer, the “head coach” of one of the two production trucks on site on Sunday, so to speak. He commands a broadcast that involves 23 cameras. He’s in the ears of the graphics people and the director and the replay experts and the on-air talent.
“About 80-90%” of these pre-produced stories or ideas don’t ever make air. That’s best case scenario — with the game being good enough to sustain itself. But the proof is in the pudding. Oliver sent him over a few good notes Saturday night, and they’re all here, somewhere in the trucks. “The hay is in the barn by then,” as far as Sunday preparations go, Oliver later says. The production crews know they want to talk about Rico Dowdle and his revenge tour; about Panthers coach Dave Canales saying that he can’t ‘call plays scared’; about Young’s proficiency against man-to-man defense (seven touchdowns, no interceptions, per Fox) and struggles against zone defense (four interceptions, no touchdowns).
“We can have so many pre-produced things, but the game’s going to take us places,” Mandia said earlier this week. “All of a sudden, chaos breaks out. It could be injuries. She’ll get in my ear, she’ll hit the truck back and say, ‘Hey, there’s a little friction on the bench and things like that.’ So we make sure we get a camera there.”
Just like week, in Week 5, Oliver shared with a smile a time when she was watching Cowboys tight end Jake Ferguson try to sneak out of the blue medical tent to get back out onto the field. She shared the details on the broadcast. A million little moments like that have established her, have separated her, that define the professionalism that coats her work.
FOX Sports sideline reporter Pam Oliver, center, speaks with fans along the Bank of America field prior to the Carolina Panthers vs Dallas Cowboys game on Sunday. JEFF SINER jsiner@charlotteobserver.com
That’s why she’s constantly walking around, constantly poking her head places, always moving. It’s brought her places, her colleague and Panthers legend Greg Olsen said.
“You were up watching Sunday NFL football, and you’d watch Pam Oliver do the post game interviews, the halftime coaches interviews, and she would do the sit down segments with the players and special interest pieces,” Olsen said, speaking in hypotheticals but seemingly from personal experience. “And then, you know, one day she’s interviewing you, and one day she’s covering you. And I think that’s one of the cool things about the NFL: legends kind of stick around for a long time, and you just hope as a young kid that when you get old enough, you could, you know, go into those same circles.”
When asked if Oliver is among the most notable figures the NFL has ever seen — not just as a broadcaster, but as a figure in general, Olsen doesn’t need a second thought.
“There’s no question,” he said. “Obviously it’s why she’s being inducted into the Hall of Fame. … Pam Oliver is going to go down as a historical figure. There’s no question.”
Mandia has a similar story.
“Funny you say that, because that stuff crossed my mind,” Mandia said. “Growing up, I used to see her on TV. She worked on the Pat Sumrall crew. I remember from those days at that point. I mean, I must have been. I’m 42 so I would have been, gosh, 12.”
He continued: “She’s seen so many childhood generations, right? For probably three generations of football fans go on a watch. I got a similar thing with John Madden. I remember him as an analyst. I don’t remember him as a Coach, right? I think of John as an analyst, right? Just like how this new generation sees (Troy) Aikman.
“But now for someone like Pam, I mean, 30 plus years, it’s amazing. The longevity is unmatched, and it’s a testament of what she’s done.
“And she has fun, you know? I don’t see her slowing down.”
FOX Sports analyst Greg Olsen, left, enjoys a laugh with sideline reporter Pam Oliver, right, prior to Sunday’s Carolina Panthers vs. Dallas Cowboys game at Bank of America Stadium. JEFF SINER jsiner@charlotteobserver.com
Pam Oliver and her unending attempt to prove ‘you matter’
You can’t begin to capture the career of Oliver in a few paragraphs. Much like a broadcast, 90% of it ends up on a cutting room floor.
Not the part about her cultivating a Cowboys fandom because she was born in Dallas and her mother and father, Mary and John, were massive fans of football themselves. Not the part about how she fell in love with the news before anything else, inspired by Iola Johnson, a prominent television anchor in Dallas, and Carole Simpson of World News Tonight. Not about her move from news to sports, when her news director, Bob Franklin, told her that she was making a big mistake: “No one is ever going to hear from you again,” Oliver has said a few times in interviews, lightheartedly, knowing how it all ends.
Not the parts about her freelancing with the Orlando Sentinel, and interviewing her classmate and FAMU graduate Greg Fashaw about feeling lonely when he lost his starting job on the FAMU football team. Not the parts of how stressed she was during all these deadlines while also becoming an NAIA track star, or about how thrilling it was to see her byline in the paper.
FOX Sports broadcaster is the longest tenured NFL sideline reporter with more than 500 games. JEFF SINER jsiner@charlotteobserver.com
Not about her favorite moments in Bank of America Stadium over the years, of interviews with Cam Newton and Luke Kuechly. Not about her migraines, which she’s been quite open about, and of which she said she’s already had two on game days this year.
Not about how she feels a bit sad for new journalists, and how they have to be on social media, and how she’s managed to avoid the fuss. Her husband, Al, keeps track of any and all of what people are saying about her on social media — her “buffer,” if you will, and neither the magnificent nor the downright awful filter through to her; the work, Oliver says, stands on its own. (She does, however, admit that such a position to hold is a privilege, a product of being so established before the advent of social media.)
The one theory that’s worth sharing, in full, is why she is known to talk to everyone, from the starting quarterback to the lower-level assistant. Yes, the assistant might be a head coach one day — that’s happened in her career before, she said — but there’s something else at play, too.
“You matter to me when you’re killing it, averaging over 100 yards a game,” she said. “Why would you not matter if you’re removed from that success? You’re treating another human being. I think the way you would be treated is most important when the spotlight dims.”
She told me this earlier in the week. On Sunday, I summarize her thought, repeat it back to her and ask her if she ever empathizes with the athlete in this case — if she ever sees herself in the person who wonders who they will be when their vocation is done.
Oliver nods, smiles, as she will do hundreds of other times in the pregame.
“People are like, ‘When are you going to retire?’” Oliver says. “I’m like, ‘Never.’ I’ll retire from this eventually, but I’m not going to retire from the biz.”
“I’ll be fulfilling my dreams in other ways,” she adds.
And then before you know it, she’s crossing the side of the field, choosing to stay in motion for as long as this dream, this chapter, lasts.