Whipped Cream Difficulties

50 years ago today, at about 3 PM Central Time on November 17, 1968, the New York Jets and the Oakland Raiders began a football game.

The Jets and Raiders had a fierce and tough rivalry. The late Dr. Z wrote this about their second 1967 game:

The 1967 game was one of the most vicious in Jet history. Namath was slugged to the turf; he was hit late, punched in the groin. They aimed for his knees, tried to step on his hands … And Davidson got Namath. He got him on a rollout, with a right that started somewhere between Hayward and Alameda. It knocked Namath’s helmet flying, and broke his jaw, but Namath didn’t miss a play, and he threw for 370 yards and three TD’s in that 38–27 loss.

At this point in the 1968 season, both teams were in contention for the AFL championship: if the Raiders lost, they would be a game and a half out of the lead in the AFL West division. If the Jets won, they would at least clinch a tie and possibly win the AFL East division (depending on what happened with other games).

This was also a time when televised sports, including the NFL, wasn’t as big as it is now. The first Super Bowl had been played just the year before. The AFL and the NFL wouldn’t officially merge until the end of the next season.

NBC was televising the game. But NBC had also made a very big deal with Timex to sponsor the television version of “Heidi”, which was scheduled to start at 6 PM Central and run for two hours: Timex bought all the advertising time in the 6 PM – 8 PM slot. It is worth noting that TV technology wasn’t as sophisticated as it is today. Quoting a very good article from “Sports Broadcast Journal”:

Making programming changes on the fly in those days was not the instantaneous and seamless process that it is today, when video is delivered by satellite. The use of coaxial cable then to transmit video to NBC affiliates required a number of steps at different parts of the country. It also involved AT&T which was engaged in some of the line switching.

To give you some idea of what was involved, here’s a quote from Wikipedia:

NBC ran three BOCs [Broadcast Operations Centers], in Burbank, California, Chicago, and New York City, with the last the largest. Cline was stationed at the New York BOC for the game. In the era before satellite transmission, programming was transmitted by coaxial cable line, with the cooperation of the telephone company. For this game, the Burbank BOC was to receive the feed from Oakland, insert commercials and network announcements, and send the modified feed via telephone wire to a switching station west of Chicago near the Mississippi River. An engineer was stationed there to activate the Oakland feed into the entire network when the game began, to cut it on instruction and then to return to his base. He had been told to expect at 6:58:20 Eastern Time a network announcement for Heidi, after which he was to cut the feed from Burbank, and the Heidi feed from New York would begin. This placed Burbank in effective control of whether the engineer would cut the feed, since he would act upon hearing the announcement.

Burbank being effectively in control of the game feed becomes significant later on.

You also had three broadcast networks, and maybe one or two local independent stations. Cable TV wasn’t a big thing at the time, either, so you were pretty much stuck with what you could pick up on an antenna. VHS, DVD, and Tivo didn’t exist, either. You basically had maybe one shot a year at watching something, and if you missed it…maybe next year.

But still: game starts at 3 PM, game ought to be over by 6 PM, right? Who’d ever heard of an NFL game running more than three hours? Kids today will laugh at that assertion, but at the time it was not common for an NFL game to run longer than three hours. (That’s one advantage 1968 has over today.)

So. Game starts. Game goes on.

The two starting quarterbacks combined for 31 incomplete passes, with the clock stopping on each incompletion, and the officials called 19 penalties, leading to more clock stoppages. Each team used all six of its allocated timeouts, and the many scores led to additional commercial breaks. At halftime, [Don] Connal [executive producer for NBC sports] called [Dick] Cline [“network BOC supervisor for sports telecasts”], and without urgency discussed the fact that the game seemed to be running longer than expected.

The fourth quarter started around 5:20 Central. It was at this point that various NBC brass started thinking, “Hey, this game might not be over by the time ‘Heidi’ is supposed to start.” NBC brass started calling back and forth. There was a three way conference call with Carl Lindemann (head of NBC Sports), Julian Goodman (president of NBC, who had told his people earlier in the week that “Heidi” had to start on time), and Don Durgan (in charge of NBC Television). Between the three of them, they agreed to delay the start of “Heidi” until after the game was finished.

Connal called the game producer, Ellis, in Oakland, to tell him the news, then called the BOC supervisor in Burbank – who, not knowing Connal, refused his order, and insisted on speaking with Goodman directly.

They weren’t able to get Goodman back on the phone to speak to the Burbank BOC supervisor. We’re at about 5:45 PM Central now. People are calling their local stations wanting to know if they’re going to see the end of the game, or if “Heidi” is going to start on time. People are also calling the NBC network switchboard. Lots of people. The lines are jammed. The switchboard is literally blowing fuses. Nobody can get through to Dick Cline. Including Don Connal, who has the authority to countermand the “Heidi” order, and is frantically trying to get through to the New York BOC.

Cline has his orders. He hasn’t received a phone call overriding those orders. The Burbank BOC supervisor isn’t taking orders from anyone whose name isn’t Julian Goodman, either, and they can’t get Goodman on the phone. So, with 1:01 left in the game, the Jets leading 32-29, and Oakland just having returned a kickoff to their own 22 yard line…

…Cline gives the order, Burbank drops the game feed to the eastern part of the country, and the network cuts away to “Heidi”. Much to the surprise of various network executives, and many NFL fans.

But hey! There was only 1:01 left on the clock! What can happen in 61 seconds? That’s what makes this event legendary. Oakland managed to drive for a touchdown and go up 36-32 with 42 seconds left on the clock. Then, on the ensuing kickoff, the Jets fumbled, Oakland recovered, and scored another touchdown.

Final score: Oakland 43, Jets 32. Or, as the New York Daily News put it, “Jets 32, Raiders 29, Heidi 14”.

Story goes that an hour after the game ended, the head coach of the Jets got a call from his wife congratulating him on winning the game…and he “profanely informed her of the game result”.

NBC ran a banner during “Heidi” informing viewers of the final score. But:

It did so during a scene just as Heidi’s paralyzed cousin Clara was taking her first, slow steps. According to sportswriter Jack Clary, “The football fans were indignant when they saw what they had missed. The Heidi audience was peeved at having an ambulatory football score intrude on one of the story’s more touching moments. Short of pre-empting Heidi for a skin flick, NBC could not have managed to alienate more viewers that evening.”

The next day, Dick Cline was called into a meeting. He figures he’s going to be fired. Instead, in one of the few times in the history of the republic that virtue has been rewarded, Cline was told that he had done exactly the right thing in following orders and cutting away to “Heidi”, and that he would have been fired if he hadn’t cut away.

…on the CBS Evening News the following Monday night (November 18), Harry Reasoner announced the “result” of the game: “Heidi married the goat-herder”…On the ABC Evening News, anchor Frank Reynolds read excerpts from Heidi while clips of the Raiders’ two touchdowns were shown as cut-ins.

This led to the rule: you never cut away from an NFL game in progress. (Later NFL contracts require that games air to completion in the road team’s home market.) This actually came into play again in 1975: NBC planned to air “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory”, which they’d been promoting heavily, but the Raiders-Redskins game ran long, NBC joined “Wonka” in progress 45 minutes after the movie started, and lots of parents got upset.

NBC also installed a special phone that didn’t go through the switchboard and was on a separate exchange in the BOC. Supposedly, that phone is known as the “Heidi Phone”.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you what is, in my mind, one of the three greatest events in sports history, right up there with Ten Cent Beer Night and Disco Demolition Night: the Heidi Bowl. (Some people call it a sling blade the Heidi Game, but I prefer “the Heidi Bowl” for alliterative purposes.)

Video from NFL.com.

LAT “Daily Mirror” from 1998.

“Sports Broadcast Journal” article.

Oral history from SI.

Wikipedia entry.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 17th, 2018 at 12:21 pm and is filed under History, NFL, Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.