What the heck is The Heidi Game?
Perhaps the most notorious football game of all time...
Do you remember the second round basketball game the Indiana Hoosiers played in March Madness 2012?
Probably not.
But I do.
I had purchased a special sports package so I could watch the March Madness games from London (as the Brits have not yet discovered the magic of the US college basketball tournament known as March Madness).
Indiana was playing VCU, and were down six points with less than 5 minutes to go.
Then the Hoosiers rallied.
I was on the edge of my seat.
THIS is why basketball (and especially the tournament) is so exciting!
The score was tied – and it went to commercial.
And then…the UK Sports channel I’d paid extra for began airing a soccer game.
WHAT?! You can’t stop airing a close game like that!
Except they did.
“Indiana beat VCU in a thriller” read the headlines – but I didn’t get to see it live.
Though I may have been one of the few people in the UK feeling frustrated at that moment, I am not the only sports fan who has been watching a close sporting event on TV only to miss the final moments of victory (or defeat).
And perhaps there is no game more famous for leaving fans hanging than the football game played between the Oakland Raiders and the New York Jets on November 17, 1968.
It is the game that will forever be known as The Heidi Game.
Wait…what?
What’s The Heidi Game?
When my friends Janet and Abby mentioned The Heidi Game to me, I had never heard of it, but of course,
I was curious…
Fifty-four years ago, on that fateful Sunday in November, the Jets and the Raiders were preparing for a classic game.
They were two of the best football teams in the league, and their roster included 10 future Hall of Fame players, including Jets quarterback Joe Namath.
The game would be broadcast on NBC – during the all important November Sweeps period, when television audiences were measured, and advertising prices were set.
More viewers meant more advertising revenue, and networks were always looking for creative ways to spike their ratings during Sweeps (often bringing in guest stars, or episodes with weddings or other cliffhangers that would attract more viewers).
NBC knew that the Jets/Raiders matchup was sure to bring them a lot of viewers – and it wasn’t the only program people were looking forward to watching on NBC that Sunday.
After the football game ended, NBC would be airing Heidi, a two-hour film based on the popular children’s novel about a Swiss girl who lives with her grandfather in the Alps.
It was ‘event television.’
There were no VCRs or re-plays back then. If you didn’t see a show when it aired, there was no second chance.
You missed out.
They heavily promoted Heidi in TV commercials and in newspaper advertisements.
The New York Times had boasted Heidi as the best TV program of the day.
NBC was banking on having football fans that afternoon, and families that evening.
They allotted three hours in their schedule for the Jets/Raiders game, starting at 4 pm EST (Eastern Standard Time).
Heidi, they had agreed, would start at 7 pm EST.
At the time, few professional football games took longer than two-and-a-half hours, so they felt confident the game would be finished before it was time for Heidi to begin.
And they had an incentive to be punctual.
They had sold the entire two-hour advertising block for their airing of Heidi to Timex.
The contract between Timex and NBC stipulated that Heidi had to air promptly at 7 pm EST, and could not be delayed for any reason.
Before the game began, network executives at NBC had discussed what they would do if the game ran over its scheduled time, but agreed they would go ahead airing Heidi at 7 pm regardless.
And for most football games, NBC’s scheduling would have worked.
But this was not like most football games.
The game was not only high scoring, it also was full of penalties (19) and incomplete passes (31) that made the game run long.
As the minutes went by, getting closer to 7 pm, NBC programmer Dick Cline watched the phone, waiting for a call from his bosses at NBC.
“I waited and waited,” Dick said later, “and I heard nothing.”
With a little more than one minute to go, the Jets kicked a 26-yard field goal, and were leading the Raiders 32-29.
“We came up to that magic hour and I thought, ‘Well, I haven’t been given any counter-order so I’ve got to do what we agreed to do.’”
Just before 7 pm, with one minute and five seconds left on the game clock, NBC went to commercial.
And, despite the game still being in play, Dick followed the instructions he had been given.
As the game carried on in Oakland Coliseum, when NBC came back from commercial, football fans watching on TV found their screens were now playing a children’s movie.
Many fans would be disappointed to miss the end of a game, but fans were really disappointed to miss the end of this game.
Because a lot can happen in 65 seconds.
And the last 65 seconds of that game would go down in history.
After the Jets kickoff, the Raiders returned the ball to their own 23-yard line.
Raiders quarterback Daryle Lamonica threw a 20-yard pass to halfback Charlie Smith; a facemask penalty moved the ball to the Jets’ 43.
On the next play, Lamonica passed again to Smith, who ran it all the way for a touchdown. Kicker George Blanda made the extra point, giving the Raiders a 36-32 lead.
There were 42 seconds left on the clock.
The game seemed over.
But it wasn’t.
The Jets then fumbled the kickoff.
Raiders Preston Ridlehuber managed to grab the ball and run it two yards – for another touchdown.
Oakland scored two touchdowns in nine seconds.
New York fans were sure the Jets had won, as when the game stopped airing on the east coast screens, the Jets were up 32-29.
But the west coast feed showed the full game – with the Raiders scoring 14 points in the last minute of the game, defeating the Jets 43-32.
As the crowds inside the Oakland Coliseum cheered, most of the country was unaware of what had happened, as writer Bob Valli described in the Oakland Tribune:
“Television missed one of football’s most exciting and exhausting minutes of emotion.
“In that minute, Oakland fans saw despair turn to delirium.”
Given the game was so exciting, why didn’t the NBC executives change their minds?
Well, interestingly, before the game ended, they had changed their minds, and were trying to reach Dick Cline to tell him to leave the game on until it was over.
But all the telephone lines were busy.
Thousands of people were calling the network: some to urge programmers to air Heidi as scheduled, and likely thousands more to demand that NBC air the game until it finished.
The audience reaction was so great at the NBC switchboard that it became overloaded and a fuse blew out.
Then people began calling the telephone company, the New York Times, and even the NYPD to complain.
Whatever choice NBC made at 7 pm, they could not win.
But then, they made a bad situation worse.
Upon learning the final score of the game, they decided to display the results at the bottom of the screen while Heidi was playing, 20 minutes after the game ended.
And again, their timing was off.
The game score appeared on screen during a particularly dramatic moment in the film.
As Heidi’s paralyzed cousin Klara summoned up courage to try walking, NBC displayed the message at the bottom of the screen:
“SPORTS BULLETIN: RAIDERS DEFEAT JETS 43-32.”
“When I saw the banner, I thought it was handled very insensitively,” said Delbert Mann, the director of Heidi.
“I was so upset, I gave a scream of anguish.”
Sportswriter Jack Clary wrote that this angered both football fans and the Heidi audience.
“Short of pre-empting Heidi for a skin flick, NBC could not have managed to alienate more viewers that evening,” he wrote.
NBC later apologized for the incident – and they learned from their mistake.
They ensured football fans would not miss the end of a game broadcast on NBC again, inserting a clause into their contracts guaranteeing that all games would be broadcast in their entirety in their home networks.
They also installed a new phone in the control room at NBC – called “The Heidi Phone” – to ensure such a disaster would never happen again.
And interestingly, they found themselves in a similar situation seven years later.
NBC had heavily promoted the children’s film Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory to air on November 23, 1975 – at 7 pm – after the Raiders/Redskins football game.
When the game went into overtime, NBC was true to their word and stayed with the game for almost 45 minutes.
They then aired Wonka, 45 minutes in progress, prompting – you guessed it – more angry calls.
FUN FACT:
A week after Heidi aired, NBC took out a full page ad in national newspapers quoting rave reviews from the critics.
The last quote on the ad was this:
BONUS FUN FACT:
More than 30 years after playing the title role in Heidi, actress Jennifer Edwards happened to be on an airplane — sitting across the aisle from Jets quarterback Joe Namath.
“At one point, I leaned over and I said, ‘Do you remember ‘The Heidi Game’?’
And he looked at me, like, ‘Well, duh!’
And I said, ‘Well, I want to formally introduce myself. I'm Heidi.’”
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-Beth
Such a great story! And love all the backstory that I never knew about!
I had so much fun reading this and could feel the viewers' frustration. It kept me on the edge of my seat, but unlike the poor fans that day, I was able to laugh. Thank you for writing this, Beth!