While the NFL is doing their best to try an quash reports about NFL players suffering concussions, the story has hit home for one Fox Sports sideline reporter.

The NY Daily News reports that no one could blame Oliver for not wanting to talk about the most painful moment — literally — of her career as Fox’s NFL sideline reporter. It happened on Sunday, Aug. 18, at the Meadowlands during pregame warmups when a pass thrown by Colts backup QB Chandler Harnish hit her flush on the side of the face.

In the immediate aftermath she refused to read about it, talk about it or watch the video. “Now I want to get it out there. It was a painful, shocking moment,” Oliver said in an exclusive interview over the telephone. “I didn’t really know what happened.”

In the days following this flash of pain, neither would anyone else who watched the Internet video. Not the people who thought it was funny. Nor the ones who felt bad for her.

Until now, they did not know she suffered a concussion.

Adrenaline got Oliver through the game telecast (“You don’t want to be wimpy, you just have to push through it.”), but in the car riding back to the hotel, when she began to relax, the slight headache turned into one of the pounding variety. She tried reconstructing what happened leading up to the moment.

Oliver had just finished doing an interview with referee Ed Hochuli for a piece she was doing on NFL refs for Showtime’s “60 Minutes Sports,” which airs Wednesday night, and returned to the sidelines. “That’s all I remember,” she said. “I asked the people around me, ‘What happened?’ They told me I just got hit in the head with a football.”

After waking up that Monday her head hurt so much she had to hold it. “The sensitivity to light started and some nausea too,” she said, “my whole body was sore.” Oliver went to the doctor. The CT Scan came up clean, but she was diagnosed with a concussion. Oliver spent the next five days in a dark room inside her home.

“I slept for hours on end. The minute you wake up you’re reminded. Your head is pounding,” she said. “I really could not take light — the light from the TV, the accent lighting. The sun was completely my enemy. My blinds were drawn. It was miserable.”

Read the rest from the NY Daily News