More on the Heidi Game:

Raiders vs. New York Jets
November 17, 1968
Oakland 43, Jets 32

You want an indication of the bizarre nature of the football war waged by the Oakland Raiders and New York Jets on the afternoon of Nov. 17, 1968? Though the game was filled with marquee-worthy stars—Joe Namath, Daryle Lamonica, Fred Biletnikoff and Don Maynard among them—the two most notable acts were turned in by guys named Preston Ridlehuber and Dick Cline.

Ridlehuber would be permanently out of football little more than a year later. Cline never set foot on an NFL field.

The event now known as the Heidi Game featured a most remarkable ending. But what earned it a spot in sporting lore—and 10th place among the Most Memorable NFL Games of the Century—is the fact that most of the nation was not allowed to see that conclusion. After the Jets' Jim Turner kicked a field goal to give his team a 32-29 lead with 1:05 to play, NBC went to a commercial. When the network returned, it was not to a taut battle of American Football League heavyweights. It was to "Heidi", that pig-tailed Alpine goat-herder, as played by Jennifer Edwards in a made-for-TV premiere movie.

Time out for a little contextual set-up: The Jets and Raiders were the class of the AFL. Each was 7-2 coming into this showdown at the Oakland Coliseum. More than that, their games had blossomed into hatefests, full of late hits and bloody noses. This one was not a disappointment.

The Heidi Game featured five lead changes and a dizzying show of aerial acrobatics. Namath passed for 381 yards and a touchdown, Lamonica for 311 yards and four touchdowns. Maynard caught 10 passes for 228 yards. The game also included 19 penalties for 238 yards.

It was the penalties, in part, that caused the game to overflow its three-hour time slot. It was due to end at 7 p.m. Eastern time. When it didn't, NBC switched to Heidi in the Eastern and Central zones. The man who threw the switch was Cline, NBC's supervisor of broadcast operation control (BOC).

"I knew something big had happened," says Cline, who still directs sporting events for NBC and CBS, "because we didn't get any phone calls at all. And we couldn't call out."

What happened was a torrent of angry calls from East Coast couch potatoes, who asked, in colorful terms, why a spunky little girl had replaced their football game. They flooded the switchboard at Manhattan's Rockefeller Plaza and crashed the phone exchange.

As it happened, they missed a fairly exciting 65 seconds. Lamonica threw a 43-yard touchdown pass to halfback Charlie Smith with 42 seconds to play, giving Oakland a 36-32 lead. The ensuing kickoff spurted free and Ridlehuber, the Raiders' reserve fullback, picked it up and ran into the end zone. The Raiders had scored 14 points in a shorter time than it took Heidi to yodel.

NBC president Julian Goodman issued a formal apology the next day. But no heads rolled, least of all Cline's.

"I was saved by the set of conditions [distributed to network executives each week]," he says. "I had it in print. In fact, the vice president of my division told me that if I had taken it on my own and stayed with the game, I would have been fired."

The problem was one of policy, not individual decision-making. NBC had sold the Heidi advertising to Timex, and was obligated to show the movie from 7 to 9 P.M. The game's surreal finish altered that practice. Evermore, TV networks would stay with football games until their conclusion. The program to follow would then "slide," rather than being joined in progress.

At NBC, one other lasting change followed in the wake of the Jets-Raiders game. The network installed a new phone in the BOC room, wired to a separate exchange. Of course, it became known as the Heidi Phone.