Week 11: "The Heidi Game"

Two months before Super Bowl III, in which Joe Namath successfully guaranteed victory for the AFL’s underdog Jets, New York played an AFL foe, the Oakland Raiders, at Oakland Coliseum. Both teams were 7-2, and the game, on November 17, 1968, was nationally televised on NBC at 4 p.m. EST. Football fans watched riveted as these hated rivals swapped leads in a viciously physical – and high-scoring – affair. Namath threw a 50-yard TD pass early in the fourth to make it 26-22, Jets, and after more back-and-forth scoring, a Jets field goal with 1:05 left put them ahead, 32-29. It was about 7 p.m. ET, and when NBC returned from commercial, a children’s movie, Heidi – about a pigtailed orphan girl in the Swiss Alps that had been scheduled to air at 7 – aired across the country except on the West Coast. Enraged fans missing the game telephoned NBC (to no avail). In the meantime, the Raiders were driving down the field and scoring on a 43-yard pass play to pull ahead, 36-32. And fans were still calling the network when the Raiders returned a fumble for a touchdown on the kickoff to win, 43-32. The outrage was so high, "Jets Cut for Heidi" was a front page headline on the New York Times the next day. In a rematch, the Jets beat the Raiders, 27-23 in the AFL title game, which was shown on NBC in its entirety. ― NFL 100

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