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From: yarnellwill
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  • Heidi fucked the New York Jets up. The Raiders should thank Heidi, but as the Raiders still stay strong, I love this. VINTAGE!!!

  • What do we remember most, the game or the movie? As the viewer, you decide what is important.

  • Anyone remember in the 1980s when a lot of football games would get cut off by technical difficulties please stand by screens? Sometimes you would hear the audio from the game and sometimes you wouldn't

    It would seem like that was worse then the Heidi mess.

  • Anyone remember in the 1980s when a lot of football games would got out with technical difficulties please stand by screens? Sometimes you would have the audio in the background and sometimes you wouldn't Any idea what use to cause those problems?

    That seems like it would be worse then the Heidi mess.

  • My wife was at this game and left before the comeback..she listened to the victory from the car radio.

  • Back then, when a show started at a certain time, it started at that time.

    If the game had been a blowout, say 42 - 3, then no one would have said a thing.

    The networks also had contracts to deal with.

    Heidi had to come first.

    George Vreeland Hill

  • Weren't tv timeouts created because of commercials getting cut off when the networks went back to the game when there was a big play like someone breaking lose on a kickoff return?

  • Hey Delbert Mann go eat a turd.

  • For die-hard football fans...especially Jets fans watching a nailbiter of a game..."Heidi" would be about the most insanely surrealistic thing to cut away to.

  • Comment removed

  • Who cares...its only the Raiders.

  • 21 years later, NBC had "Heidi Game 2", when the final minutes of the Classic Concentration tournament was pre-empted by Father Bush giving a speech. Fans were upset, that on Monday, NBC did announce the results of that game show tournament before the next episode of Classic Concentration.

    Lighning strikes twice!

  • LOL. The control that the jock industry has in this country today is offensive.

  • I had heard that the game was shown to conclusion on the West Coast.

    That's why Curt Gowdy's call of Oakland's comeback exists.

    In retrospect, "Heidi" should have been pushed back (in the Eastern and Central time zones) five minutes.

    One story I heard was that the head of NBC News (who also ran NBC Sports) tried to call master control in New York to tell them to "slide" prime-time back, but couldn't get through because the master-control operator was on the phone, talking to his girlfriend!

  • "I had heard that the game was shown to conclusion on the West Coast."

    Everywhere west of Denver saw the ending,from what I've read.

  • It was an easy call. Just continue with the game until it was over then start Heidi in its entirety. So what if it didn't start exactly on the hour. Everything that night gets pushed back and caught back up at the evening news.

  • @rascal211 Yes, it was an easy call. The program's sponsor had purchased the time. If it hadn't been aired as scheduled, NBC has since explained that the technician would have been fired.

  • Dude said he screamed when they showed the score to the game! Put it Somewhere it Won't matter that much?! There are way more Raiders and Jets fans than Heidi fans believe me! Only to be interrupted by some bitch fallin out of a wheelchair! C'mon man

  • Dude said he screamed when they showed the score to the game! Somewhere it Won't matter that much?! It's the most important game of the season you fuckin moron! Only to be interrupted by some bitch fallin out of a wheelchair! C'mon man

  • how can you possibly interupt a stupid kid's game played by adults who are being paid far to much, for a childs television show?

    easy, you just pull your head out your ass and realize the world does not revolve around footy ball no matter how much SOME people want it to.

  • If my calculations are correct when the game got cut off, the first complaints were by a few die-hard fans upset that they didn't carry the game to completion even though their team was losing. "I don't care they're losing, a Good Captain goes down with his Ship" kind of thing. Then the Final Score was scrolled. THAT's probably when ALL HADES BROKE LOOSE!!!

  • I was 11, and I was watching this game with my dad. Even at that young age, it blew me away when NBC switched over to Heidi. 

  • November 17, 1968 a day which will live in Infamy!!

    I was 12 years old and watching my Jets...I couldn't beleive it when they

    turned the game off..I was even more distraught when I read that my Jets ended up

    losing as the news scrolled across the bottom of my black and white TV.

    Two months later we beat the Colts in Super Bowl III...I'm still waiting..

  • @artammer

    i know exact ly how you feel, many times i have been riveted by a show i was really enjoying, a show that really mattered to me at the time, only to have it preempted to announce some meaningless child's game played by 30 something to 40 something year old homosexuals.

  • @zwatcher ur a faggot

  • @2raiders1

    that's not what your mother says

    actually she's usually more like "YES, YES, THAT'S IT, HARDER, DOING LIKE MY HUSBAND CANT!"

  • One of my best friends remembered that fateful night. He was 13 at the time. His dad was one of the few guys who had a color tv, incidentally. As NBC cut to Heidi and he and all the men in the apartment blew up and had fits, running into the halls and screaming and consoling each other, he calmly went to sit down to watch the movie.

  • From a movie director perspective, I could see why he might be upset over the scrolling text. He probably put a lot of time and money into the 2-hour production and to see scrolling "subtitles" at the bottom of a silent poignant film moment could be negative. It would be like seeing text when Scarface gets shot up or when the Godfather's Marlon Brando dies.

    Having said that, Heidi isn't Scarface or the Godfather, so I don't give a crap. Heidi can suck my left nut.

  • wow that guy is a faggot

  • This is one of the craziest moments to ever happen on television. It is now part of television history and folklore. It would make a great comedy movie

  • i never watched nbc again

  • That's why games are now scheduled for 3:15, why the 2nd doubleheader was moved from 4PM to 4:15PM. Today the average game takes over 3 hours, partially because of more passing (which stops the clock more). They even put in timing rules to shorten the game (out of bounds only stops the clock until the ball is set, where it used to be till the next snap), but with all the commercials... nueveramas said it well. 3 commercials in 4 plays!

  • Luckily I wasn't born until 1971, so I missed it. I can't imagine "60 Minutes" interrupting our late games today. Us football fans need our games in their entirety!

  • @BillG37 I second that, but I'm older than you. I was born in 1970. Even so, we both consider ourselves lucky.

  • Dear TheLastBrainLeft: CBS would eventually adopt your idea. Sometime in 1976 CBS decided to delay the start of "60 Minutes" and everything that followed on Sunday night (except out west) after the last of the late games ended. Their lineup was considered too strong, too important and too profitable to cut out part of "60 Minutes". NBC still joined the 7:00 PM ET program in progress at the end of their late games. It was a policy they started a few days after the "Heidi Game".

  • Scenario: 1:48 left in the first half.

    Commercial Break. Team A kicks off to Team B. Commercial Break. Team B ball. B runs one play, and then calls a time-out. Commercial Break. B lines up in a strange formation, forcing A to call a time-out. Commercial Break. QB runs for 9 yards and steps out of bounds. Commercial Break. QB sack; B calls time-out. Commercial Break. QB throws interception. Commercial Break. Team A ball. QB kneel.

    That's why games run long...

  • cut down on TV timeouts and they wouldn't run so long.

  • Jeez, run Heidi in it's entirety after the game ends.

  • In a way, it had to happen in order for flexibility to come into sports television to adjust scheduling for overtime, extra innings and so forth. So, I look at it as another growing pain for television. We like to say how good things used to be, well it wasn't all that good I guess.

  • I remember watching the game with my father and two brothers. We were so shocked to see Heidi appear. Then my brother put the radio on and said, "Oakland won!" Not a great memory...lol If Heidi was soooo important, why not start it at the beginning a couple of minutes late and cut a couple of commercials!!! OH no can't do that!

  • I dooo remember this Game,,grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr,,,but my Raiders Won :):):) Woooo Hooo !!!

  • @radr4lf55 Yeah your dirty playing Raiders won and often beat the Jets EXCEPT for the one game that mattered the most! AFL Championship game....NY Jets 27 - Oak. Raiders 23! Prevented a possible Oakland Super Bowl victory....awwwwww

  • Maybe football games will have Heidi games when the games last more than 3 hours. Games last way too long now. and I am a guy.

  • I was 16 back then and I was pissed! But what the fuck, shit happens, At the time a whole bunch of kids just a few years older than me were getting their lives switched off in Vietnam. Let's put things in perspective,

  • People were just STUPID back then, like this A-HOLE.

  • Hey Mann, you hypocrite, you're ticked about a little scroll when you got your movie at the cost of the fans missing an epic ending?

  • Isn't Heidi supposed to be in Switzerland or something? How come they all got English accents. It couldn't be a NBC broadcast of an English show coz the director was obviously American. I remember this like it was yesterday. I was kind of young to be watching football at the time, but my father was watching and boy did he kick a fuss up.

  • My father was one of the lucky fans. He was AT the game and got to see his team score those two miraculous touchdowns.

  • Heidi can suck My dick... Its Football

  • Heidi got FOOTBALL ROLL'D

  • I love football as much as anyone. But I never understood the "outrage" over all of this.

  • @dave4248 It's like if the Super Bowl was going down to the wire with let's say the Patriots and Giants in SB 42, and the network goes to commercial with NE threatening to come back save their perfect season and the network shows American Idol or something with a minute to go. 

  • @smiley66goodvibes67, This WASN'T the super bowl. It wasn't even the playoffs....or as Jim Mora would say.........PLAYOFFS? PLAYOFFS?!?

  • @smiley66goodvibes67 that would of pissed me off because I was hoping for New York to win the game

  • This reminds me of the Max Headroom incident.

  • Funny as hell! Hiedi crawling with sports score scrolliing under her

  • Does anyone have this whole game on film or 'scope? Could anyone download it?!!

    That would be something!!

  • Ever notice that every team's 'Greatest Games' are always with the Raiders?

    The Raiders teams from that era just had a sense of history.

  • @nanderson1965 the oakland a's are better at football than the oakland raiders. fuck the bitch ass raiders. 15 in a row in 2010

  • They took care of this problem, now they just blackout all the raiders games.

  • Guys wining about a 2 second score flashing across the screen. Now there's crap at the bottom of the screen non stop.

  • Jets get even six weeks later.

  • Delbert Mann is a Selfish Bastard! Best publicitity you have ever gotten? Just don't show your face around the American General Public!

  • @Jiltedin2007 No need to worry about that, he's dead.

  • @bigdon1966 O. K. then.

  • Delbert Mann is a Selfish Bastard!

  • Well looks like NBC hasn't learned. At the Olympics Closing Ceremony, NBC cut away to debut "The Marriage Ref" =P

  • Thanks for posting this, really good stuff. I totally understand why football fans were pissed off by this, but at the same time, their reaction was ridiculous. Why would anyone call the NYPD?? It's a football game, not a mugging! Johnny Sample needs to shut up, he sounds ridiculous. :) Personally, I wish they would cut games off *sometimes* because I don't like being held hostage by an endless game when I want to watch something on TV. :)

  • @hillbillyprofane --- I agree. Games are too commericailized too. Bring back the Heidi games and maybe games will be shorter. Games now even last 3 hours and 30 minutes now...even longer...and do away with overtimes in regular seasons. A tie would not hurt anyone.

  • @Wellch I know someone who took his kids to an NFL Game. Both Kids played in a "Pee-Wee" League, and when they saw the NFL Game they got bored because "The Players would stand around doing nothing" for 5 minutes at a time. This was, of course due to the Commercial Breaks. They ended up leaving after the Halftime Show. I stopped watching this year, you cannot go 15 minutes without seeing one of those "ED Pill" Ads. Don't they realise CHILDREN ARE WATCHING!

  • As a then 8-year-old girl named Heidi, that game has been my bete noire ever since it happened. It seems every American football fan in the world has to get in a dig at my namesake *and* at me personally for preempting the end of the game. Still. You'd think the'd get tired of it after the first 40 years or so :P

  • deadrose23 same story here. I was 7 and my sister was 10 and we were ecstatic. I never heard so much foul language out of my fathers mouth. He stomped, he cussed, he slamed doors and threw things. He lit cigarette after cigarette. Hilarious!

  • I was a 9 year old girl anxiously awating Heidi on this date. I will never forget the look on my father's face, or the phone calls coming in, when the game switched to Heidi. My sister and I were jumping up and down because the movie had started. Dad was jumping up and down for other reasons. We still laugh about it today.

  • was your dad a Ny fan or an oakland fan?

  • Actually, the actress playing the title role was an American, Jennifer Edwards (Blake's daughter!).

    NBC's "Heidi Game 3" took place at the 1991 NHL All-Star Game. Network coverage was cut off at the end of the 2nd quarter, and, instead of the rest of the game, hockey fans watched continuing Gulf War coverage. No wonder St. Louis was the #1 market for the NHL All-Star Game--KSDK was the #1 NBC affiliate in the U.S.A.!

  • What is the background music for the beginning of this video clip?

  • Over the Hill Gang

  • It is NFL films music written specifically for NFL Films. You can buy it in a large box set: NFL FILMS Autumn Thunder - 40 Years of NFL Films Music

  • Thank you sweetbello.

  • your welcome

    here is the track:

    Autumn Thunder 40 Years of NFL Films Music Disc 2 track 5: The Over the Hill Gang

  • I hope I'm not the only one who found this funny.

  • @mirhidauby

    I had to look this vid up because it still cracks me up! The whole scenario, complete with the sports scroll at the worst possible moment in the movie (Although some may see a hilarious irony there) makes me crack up every time I think of it!

  • ha! Like Heidi and her grandfather?

  • I do hope that the director in this clip here is being sarcastic...scrolling the score at the bottom of the screen is the LEAST that NBC could have done. I'm sure the girls watching the film survived and enjoyed the rest of the movie all the same, but the millions of grown men deprived of the conclusion of the Jets/Raiders game were probably traumatized for life.

  • TheAmazinAnarchist1: are you being sarcastic? Traumatized for life? :) It is just a game, and it was decades ago. I hope they got over it! :)

  • Football games last too long anyway. I secretly wish that the network would do it again. Football games used to last easily under 3 hrs at one time.

  • And yet years later FOX still had the balls to show Futurama in the NFL overtime slot. They learned their lesson after that and began to play reruns at that 7pm hour.

  • No Preston Ridlehuber - who played for the Bills as well - but this was his 15 seconds of fame!

  • My father and I were watching the game but listening to Merle Harmon and Sam DeLuca doing the game on radio. We heard the ending, but could not understand, until later, why NBC did not finish the game.

  • Johnny Sample uuggh how could you waste too much time and have the galls to attack the network when they left the game. I just can't stand him.

    Wasn't there another video on youtube about the Hedi game that starts with a red screen saying the Heidi Game is anyone Watching?

  • Comment removed

  • this would have been avoided if there was Internet haha. then you could have just followed the game on Yahoo Sports...

    ...or you could have just watched an illegally uploaded version of Heidi on YouTube. oh the wonders of technology

  • Dude, fuck Delbert mann....haha

  • no mention of Preston Ridlehuber?

  • BAWAWAHA! TV sports have come a long way. Five stars.

  • i wasent born yet but i heard all about this game

  • Aren't the officials supposed to be wearing red stripes? They were in the AFC legacy games.

  • This was eight years after the beginning of the league. Apparently it changed to black.

  • That was back when I liked the Raiders.

  • Delbert, you are the Mann!!

  • 1:09-1:12 "That's how the ball bounces" this is not basketball.

  • lmao...good one, what an artsie dipshit.

  • Too bad it's a fucking metaphor. :P

  • Reminds me of when the Vikings were going up against the Ravens...last quarter...Vikings in the lead...then cut off for one of the worst Jets games I've ever seen...

  • I recall my Dad cussin like the sailor he was!

  • lol suckers

  • i would be pissed too...

  • So Jets and Raiders fans miss out on a HUGE two final minutes of a game...and this clueless clod is complaining about a bloody CRAWLER?

  • THIS!

    He's bitching about 2 seconds of text, simply informing of the score of an incredible game, which doesn't even BLOCK anything?

    What a douche!

  • Eh. It's not so bad as that; he wasn't complaining they did it, just that they picked a terrible time for it.

  • It's not like it actually blocked anything, though.

    It didn't, in any way, block what was going on. But if a parent was watching this with his kids, the kids would obviously be watching the movie without even noticing it, but the parent would obviously NOTICE the score.

  • @abridgeduploader Hear Hear!!

  • He was upset at the way people responded to the crawler. When people found out the Jets lost there was obviously a lot of cussing and screaming in the middle of an emotional moment in the movie

  • Heidi rules! ;D

    (I kid...my name is Heidi...) duh.

  • How about STUPID TBS last year for the Red Sox-Rays ALCS. I think they were still showing Cop Chases or something, meanwhile Game 7 of the ALCS is in the 3rd inning. Please leave all LCS to FOX please. Give TBS something no one cares about, like the NBA

  • oh people care about the NBA...just because you don't who cares what you think?

  • A semi Hedi occurred a few years ago in the NHL Stanley Cup Semi Finals between Buffalo and Ottawa. NBC started that game at 1pm(ET) i think just before the Preakness thinking the game would end at the triple crown pre race show.

    The Sabres-Sens went into overtime and almost all of the USA except for the Buffalo/Upstate NY stations switched to the pre race show.

    I know the NHL is way behind the NFL in US in popularity but still IMO that was a 'diss' to NHL fans in US.

  • My friend TBS/TNT still has another 4 years 'sharing' the LCS w/ FOX-TV until after the 2013 post season.

    Bud Selig is a pimp who a major cause of the 1994/95 MLB strike, steriods in baseball and is the sports league boss i dislike the most ever in my life.

    Back to this Heidi game, if this occured in world of NFL in 2008/2009, the President of CBS, FOX, NBC or ESPN would be fired on the spot. While this was a bad job indirectly this was the best publicty ever for the soon merged AFL/NFL.

  • Now if they had cut off the game to start the classic version of HEIDI with Shirley Temple, that would have been different!! LOL

  • Back in the 70's I was a diehard Vikings fan. But I missed TWO of what are amongs the Vikings most dramatic plays in what is considered they're most dramatic victory. The Rashad "Hail Mary Game" against the Browns in 1980.

    The hook and lateral, and then the game winning bomb to Rashad.

    But just before, the station changed to the Dolphins game so I missed them.The NFL had/has a contract that a home teams' game had to be seen entirely and I lived in Miami and the Dolphins played at 4.

  • Hey, That director has his head up his own bum. "I love little girls, i focus my entire life on them. When big men are enthralled in a game with just a couple minutes left, There is no way we should DELAY my show." Apparently tape delay did not exist then? strange. They learned from that mistake.

  • Johnny Sample at 1:02 is funny.

    He's the only player to have won an NFL, AFL, and Super Bowl Championship.

  • THEY GOT HEIDI ROLL'D!

  • Most people don't realize that NBC almost did it again in 1975, when the Raiders played the Redskins. That game went to OT (won by Oakland, I believe) and they delayed showing Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

    No Willy Game here!

  • Yes, the 1975 game was won by Oakland over Washington 26-23 in OT. The game was played in Washington.

  • @canadianblaster09 They cut off half the Movie! The Wonderful World of Disney got cut off numerous times when games ran long. Sometimes there would be a two-part Episode, and BOTH WEEKS the game ran long, cutting the show off. I recall one such Episode where I got to see 10 minutes of Part 1 and 15 minutes of part 2, thanks to Games that went into Overtime. This year FINALLY got to see that Episode INTACT, thanks to a Bootleg DVD.

  • The reason so many people acted so violently after the game got cut off was because they were drunk but it could have be worse. If bars and restaurants had be open when that game got cut there might have been fights and people storming NBC.

  • Great AFL memory. Kurt Gowdy and Al DiRogatis.

    What's often forgotten is that this was the season the Jets went on to beat the NFL Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III.

  • You got it the other way around hahahah.

    Biggest upset in Super Bow history.

    The Jets actually beat the Raiders in the AFL championship game, to go to the SB.

  • Actually, I think you didn't read my comment correctly.

    I said: "What's often forgotten is that this was the season the Jets went on to beat the NFL Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III.

    The Heidi game was in 1968. The AFL Jets beat the NFL Colts in January 1969.

    I have it exactly as it happened. Hahahaha

  • This explains why if you watch the CBS in the fall and shows like 60 Minutes are on at 8 ET and then the local news comes on at almost midnight when CBS has the NFL doubleheader.

  • I was watching that game........MAN, was I pissed, not that Oakland won.........but that the last minute was cut from the game.......LOL, yeah, I'm a football fan.....obviously Delbert Mann wasn't.......but yeah, this game will NEVER be forgotten........

  • Sounds like what happened last year when FOX cut MLB for NASCAR with only one minute to go. The game was running late(due to a rain delay) and the race was in its 5th lap.

  • did he just say intense scene at 2:46... wow hes a reatrd... wats more intense than scoring 2 tds in 3 minutes and winning the game...?

  • it actually didnt happened suddenly. they went to commercial break after the kickoff, then NBC's "Living Color" graphic appeared, then the movie.

  • Hey Delbert Mann, kiss my ass. Pantywaist LOSER.

  • Hahaha, pantywaist =^P

  • 18 years later there was a Bears game which I cna't remember the other team, CBS interuppted the game for for some conferrence with Pope John Paul the II and the same thing happened with everyone calling CBS and the CBS affiliate in Chicago.

    No one learned the first time.

  • that delbert mann guys blows. what a dick

  • they blew out the switch boards at the NYPD! hahahahaha! thats funny!

  • I like Mr. Samples comment.

  • I remember this. My brother was a big Raider fan (still is). We were shouting.

  • oh no! they scrolled the score at the bottom of a pivotal moment in Heidi! how fucking dare they!!

    no one gives 2 shits about Heidi.

    SILVER AND BLACK BABY!

  • OMG IT COVERED GRASS!

  • this is f^&%ed up!

  • nowadays they would likely storm the network. 1968 people couldn't go to bars on sunday which would lead to people being drunk when the switch occured. AFL went downhill after it became AFC sadly they just don't play like that anymore.

  • Heh. If something like this happened nowadays during, say, an important football ("soccer") match, I dare say there would be bloodshed.

    But that director's a douche, complaining about the scroll. At least people could still see the movie. How did he think the football fans felt when the game was abruptly cut short?

  • I don't watch football cause I work on sundays. I am just upset sunday night televsion got ruined cause a bunch of guys couldn't control themselves and live and let live instead of blowing telephone switchboards. Football in 1968 was pretty bloody and more violent then it is now. I watched the 1968 version of Heidi once on a local station pretty good version. They need to make a dvd about the heidi game with the game and the movie plus documentary about it. I don't own the move on dvd.

  • Hey Bradhig, every guy watches football, I bet you are one of those dicks who would watch Heidi.

  • Johnny Sample is a moron. NBC had a contract saying they had to start Heidi a 7:00

  • If you're not watching the game, it shouldn't matter how long the game takes. Who's the idiot now, dumb ass?

  • 40 year anniversary tonight

  • It's not the end of the world if football gets interrupted in the last minutes. blame the football coaches and players for not getting it done in time. I would still be cutting off games that threaten to go late. Why do you think sunday night television sucks now?

  • lmao thats awsome

  • You idiots!

  • Johnny Sample is mad at the incident to this day.

  • now heidi has a baseball counterpart in the form of the "Steve Harvey Show"

  • a recent incident similiar to this was the preemption of the opening minutes of the alcs on tbs last night and airing the steve harvey show, due to a power outage in atlanta.

  • Delbert Mann...SHUT UP. Your movie appeals to little girls and pansy men. Real men watch football.

  • Quality is skippy.

  • classic gringo mistakes

  • Like leaning the border open.

  • ...or spelling "leaving" with an "n"

  • I remember JP McCarthy on WJR radio in Detroit moaning about this....I was in 3rd grade.