Of all the reactions to Charissa Thompson’s comments on a recent episode of the “Pardon My Take” podcast — in which the Fox Sports and NFL on Prime Video host said that during her short stint as a sideline reporter in the late 2000s, she made up some halftime reports — the reaction from Laura Okmin stood out the most to me.

“THE privilege of a sideline role is being the 1 person in the entire world who has the opportunity to ask coaches what’s happening in that moment,” Okmin wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “I can’t express the amount of time it takes to build that trust. Devastated w/the texts I’m getting asking if this is ok. No. Never.”

She continued.

“Using as an opportunity to teach young reporters: There’s coaches who don’t give anything- even apologize early in wk for it,” Okmin said. “You gather info in those conversations & take w/you -‘he was looking for this, hoped he didn’t see that.’ My point being YOU PREPARE for these instances.”

Okmin was responding to these comments on sideline reports from Thompson on “Pardon My Take”:

“I’ve said this before, so I haven’t been fired for saying it, but I’ll say it again. I would make up the report sometimes, because … the coach wouldn’t come out at halftime, or it was too late and I didn’t want to screw up the report. So I was like, ‘I’m just gonna make this up.’ Because first of all, no coach is gonna get mad if I say, ‘Hey, we need to stop hurting ourselves, we need to be better on third down, we need to stop turning the ball over … and do a better job of getting off the field.’ They’re not gonna correct me on that. So I’m like, ‘It’s fine, I’ll just make up the report.’”

On Thursday night I had a long conversation with Okmin about those comments. I asked her what prompted her to go public with her thoughts, especially as a Fox Sports employee.