Heidi Game

NFL single game infobox
name=The Heidi Game


caption=
visitor=New York Jets
visitor abbr=NYJ
visitor coach=Weeb Ewbank
visitor record=7-2
home=Oakland Raiders
home abbr=OAK
home coach=John Rauch
home record=7-2
visitor qtr1=6
visitor qtr2=6
visitor qtr3=7
visitor qtr4=13
visitor total=32
home qtr1=7
home qtr2=7
home qtr3=8
home qtr4=21
home total=43
date=1968-11-17
stadium=Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum
city=Oakland, California
referee=
attendance=53,318
odds=
network=NBC
announcers=Curt Gowdy and Kyle Rote|In American football, the Heidi Game (often also called "The Heidi Bowl"), refers to a famous American Football League (AFL) game between the New York Jets and the Oakland Raiders, played on November 17, 1968 in Oakland, California. This game is memorable largely as the result of a decision by the NBC television network to terminate the broadcast with 65 seconds left to play in the game in favor of broadcasting a pre-scheduled airing of "Heidi", a new made-for-TV version of the classic children's story.

With the Jets leading 32-29 with only 65 seconds left in the game, NBC programmers, eager to maintain their evening schedule, switched off the ostensibly-decided game. However, the Raiders came back and scored 14 points, winning 43-32. Because of NBC's decision, fans outside of the Pacific Time Zone were unable to see Oakland's comeback live. The complaints to the network indicated a new height of popularity for the game in the United States.

The game

Both teams entered the game with 7-2 records, and were considered two of the best teams in the ten-team AFL. The Raiders were the defending AFL champions from 1967, and the contending Jets had superstar quarterback Joe Namath in his fourth pro season.

The game was televised by NBC Sports, with announcers Curt Gowdy and Kyle Rote. The broadcast was scheduled to be followed by the premiere of "Heidi", an adaptation of the classic children's story about the Swiss girl. Kickoff was at 4:00 pm Eastern Time (ET), allowing three hours before the scheduled 7:00 pm start time for the movie. Typically, football games in that era were completed in under three hours. Additionally, up until this time it was not uncommon for games to not be shown in their entirety, especially if the game's outcome was not realistically in doubt, or there was a more attractive matchup following (in fact, NBC had cut away from San Diego at Buffalo – the first game of that afternoon's doubleheader – to showcase the entire Jets-Raiders game).

The game was a hard-fought offensive contest, with a number of fights and penalties. The first half ended with Oakland leading 14-12. The game remained competitive throughout the second half when, with 1:05 left in the fourth quarter, Jim Turner kicked a 26-yard field goal to give New York a 32-29 lead. The field goal was kicked near the end of the game's three-hour time slot on the network.

The ensuing kickoff was returned by the Raiders to their own 23-yard line, and NBC went to a commercial break just before 7:00 pm.

The incident

Because NBC was contractually obligated to the movie's sponsor, Timex, to broadcast "Heidi" from 7 pm to 9 pm that evening, the network had instructed Dick Cline, NBC's Broadcast Operations Supervisor, to cut to "Heidi" at exactly 7:00 pm, whether the football game was over or not. [http://www.nfl.com/news/mostmemorable10.html] As the game approached its exciting ending, however, NBC's executives changed their minds and decided to air the game to its conclusion and make "Heidi" wait. However, because so many football viewers were calling the network requesting the network not cut away from the game (and others asking if "Heidi" would air on-time) the NBC executives could not get through. NBC tried to contact the mobile unit in Oakland to call Broadcasting Operations, but Broadcasting Operations countered that they needed direct orders in order to rearrange scheduled programming.

With the game fed on telephone lines instead of satellites, Cline could not see what happened in the final minute. In an NBC Burbank studio where the TV feed was being controlled, Cline received no late instructions otherwise, and when the network came back from commercials, "Heidi" started on schedule at 7:00 pm.

Cline later said that he was called directly by the president of NBC after the network ended its coverage, demanding that the game be put back on the air. However, the video link to the stadium had already been disconnected; reestablishing it would have required action by a multitude of telephone switching stations across the country. AT&T, which handled NBC's remote feeds, was unable to reach all of the necessary offices before the game ended.

While millions of stunned football fans east of Denver suddenly found themselves watching Jennifer Edwards in "Heidi", the Raiders scored two touchdowns on three plays and won the game 43-32 in what has been voted by fans as one of the 10 most memorable games in American football history. Daryle Lamonica completed a 20 yard pass to Charlie Smith. Jet Mike D’Amato grabbed Smith's facemask on the play and the 15 yard penalty put the Raiders into Jets territory on the 43 yard line. On the next play Smith caught a pass and ran by D'Amato for a 43-yard touchdown with 42 seconds left, putting Oakland ahead 36-32. Then, on the ensuing kickoff, Jet Earl Christy fumbled the ball at the 10 yard line. The ball landed on the two yard line where Raiders special teamer Preston Ridlehuber recovered it and took it in for a touchdown with 33 seconds left in the game.

Reactions

At 7:20 pm, a crawl across the bottom of the screen announced the ending to the game (during a dramatic point in the movie when Heidi's paralyzed cousin Clara fell from her wheelchair and had to summon enough courage to try to walk). So many fans called NBC to complain about missing the fantastic ending (and to make various and sundry threats) that the switchboard ceased to function, blowing at least 25 circuits in the process. Many irate viewers also called NBC affiliates, radio stations, newspapers such as "The New York Times", the telephone company and the NYPD. This resulted in NBC making a public apology at 8:30pm.

The next morning the incident was covered on the front page of "The New York Times."

NBC bought advertisements in several major newspapers soon after the incident, proclaiming rave reviews for "Heidi", along with a tongue-in-cheek quote from Jets quarterback Joe Namath: "I didn't get a chance to see it, but I heard it was great."

Neither Gowdy nor Rote knew they were off the air after 7:00 pm. After the game, they were packing up when the stage manager yelled at Curt Gowdy to "do those two touchdowns again." Gowdy reconstructed the call, which ran on NBC's news programs as well as Monday morning's "Today" show.

NBC President Julian Goodman issued a statement following the game, calling the incident "a forgivable error committed by humans who were concerned about children expecting to see Heidi at 7:00 pm." He added, "I missed the end of the game as much as anyone else." According to Cline in the book "Going Long", Goodman used his direct line phone (as the switchboard was down) to tell Cline, "This is Julian Goodman. Put the football game back on "now"." Other accounts claim no such direct-line phone was installed until "after" the "Heidi Bowl".

The following evening, on the "ABC Evening News", anchor Frank Reynolds was seen reading excerpts from "Heidi" (with the title of the book clearly visible), with cut-ins showing the two Raider touchdowns.

Aftermath

* The reaction to the Heidi Game resulted in the AFL and NFL, and most other sports leagues, demanding that networks televise all games to their conclusion. NFL contracts with the networks now require games to be shown in a team's market area to the conclusion, regardless of the score.
* Many fans who were angry with the network interruption of the game sent NBC numerous items of Heidi paraphernalia in various states of defilement. Some examples were Heidi dolls with knives in the back and Heidi pictures with images of death or other similar disturbing images. Other examples which were more benign were fans sending in copies of the book Heidi, or cartoons showing a little Swiss girl carrying a football.
* A subsequent broadcast in 1975 on NBC - the network premiere broadcast of "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" - was preempted until the completion of a Washington Redskins-Oakland Raiders game.
* Rule changes to keep the game clock running after out of bounds plays were instituted to speed the game.
* At NBC, the network installed a new phone in the control room wired to a separate exchange, becoming known as the "Heidi Phone".
* Neither team would lose again that regular season, the Raiders finishing the season 12-2 and the Jets finishing 11-3. Both teams would also win their respective divsions, the Raiders the West and the Jets the East.
* Six weeks after the "Heidi Game", the Jets came from behind to defeat the Raiders in New York in the 1968 AFL Championship Game, 27-23. Two weeks later, the Jets upset the Baltimore Colts 16-7 in Super Bowl III.
* In a 1997 poll taken in conjunction with the NFL's 10,000th regular season game, the "Heidi Game" was voted the most memorable regular season game in pro football history by a select group of media. [ [http://www.raiders.com/history/gm2.jsp Oakland Raiders ] ]
* Fox averts most program pre-emptions during the football season by making the 7 pm-8 pm ET hour a buffer for late-running games, airing expendable repeats of their animated and comedy series. During the 2006 season, Fox began branding the entire hour before "The Simpsons" as a post-game show called "The OT presented by Lowe's" in TV listings. Before this practice, shows scheduled to air at 7 p.m. would be pre-empted entirely, which is believed to be a factor in their cancellation (Futurama) or low ratings (Malcolm in the Middle).
* CBS' newsmagazine 60 Minutes does not air until the completion of the late game in many Eastern and Central time zone markets, and the entire Sunday night lineup is delayed to the time that program starts. Viewers will often hear the line "60 Minutes will be seen in its entirety (except on the West Coast)" towards the end of the 4 pm game. Since the 2007 season, CBS has offered a text messaging/email service to alert viewers to what time the primetime lineup starts to allow adjustment of viewing and recording schedules.

Recent references

*"NBC's 75th Anniversary Special" in 2002 showed clips from the "Heidi Game" incident. Shown was footage of the game being cut to the movie, followed by an apology by David Brinkley on the next night's "Huntley-Brinkley Report," who then showed highlights of the touchdown that would have been seen live if NBC had not cut the game off (in the east). The clips were later replayed on another NBC special, "Most Outrageous Live TV Moments 2". In these instances, the pre-emption was depicted as an abrupt cut from the game to the opening titles of the movie; however, the movie actually began after a commercial break and the NBC Peacock "living color" opening.

*A late 1990s ESPN commercial promoted the cable network by depicting a disappointed Jets fan stunned at not seeing the game in its entirety.

*On the 35th anniversary of the game in 2003, the NFL Network broadcast the 1968 "Heidi" movie along with interviews and footage of the two Raiders touchdowns viewers missed. Additionally, rather than directly competing against a "Monday Night Football" game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the San Francisco 49ers, the network had a continuous on-screen scrolling graphic showing football statistics from 1968.

*ESPN parodied the Heidi Game during their presentation of "The Match-up of the Millennium" in which using old NFL Film clips to pit the greatest team of the NFL's History against each other. (such as 1960s Packers, 1970s Steelers, 1980s 49ers, 1990s Cowboys). During the end of the "game" between the 80's 49ers versus 60's Packers, the 80's 49ers drove down the field for a chip-shot FG which would win them the game. Just as the ball is being kicked the "feed" is lost and a shot was shown with the title Heidi and a speaker announces it is the beginning of a TV movie. The shot is quickly taken off and shows the 80's 49ers distraught after they missed the chip-shot FG.

*During Cartoon Network's former tradition of "The Big Game", during a "game" between Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner, the "score" had gotten ridiculously one-sided (Coyote's "score" was in negative points), that Cartoon Network "cut" to the beginning of Heidi, to which commentator John Madden interrupted and mentioned it was a joke.

See also

*"NFL on NBC"

Footnotes

References

*cite book|title=Total Football: The Official Encyclopedia of the National Football League|publisher=HarperCollins|id=ISBN 0-06-270174-6
*cite book|last=Nash|first=Bruce|coauthors=Allan Zullo|title=The Football Hall of Shame|publisher=Pocket Books|id=ISBN 0-671-74551-4

*cite book|last=Gruver|first=Ed|title="The American Football League A Year-by-Year History 1960-1969|publisher=McFarland|id=ISBN 0-7864-0399-3P.123, 203-205

External links

* [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063051/ IMDb: "Heidi" (1968)]