Heidi!
Today is the anniversary of the "Heidi Bowl." I love football anyway, and it's football season (the Titans aren't doing so well), so I'm wearing a football skin bow. Etsy shop is kraftyelves, the same bunch that brought y'all my baseball skin bow.
Oh, the Heidi Bowl. For the uninitiated, the Heidi Bowl was a regular old NFL football game between the Oakland Raiders and the New York Jets. In 1968 the Raiders and the Jets had a rivalry that equaled those between Auburn and Alabama or between the Cardinals and the Cubs. The resulting game was a donniebrook that ran long in its three-hour time slot. That was a problem because NBC, who was airing the game, had Heidi scheduled to start at 7 P.M. sharp, and they'd promised Timex (sponsoring the flick) that there would be no delays. Long story short, NBC cut the game with the Jets ahead and one minute, one second left on the clock. While football fans were being forced to watch a dumb movie about a dumb little kid, the Raiders scored TWO touchdowns and won the game! There's more to it than that, of course, a lot of behind-the-scenes crap that made the snafu possible. For those of y'all who don't like to read, YouTube has a video about the incident available here.
As is often the case with anything weird, my family has their own memories. My mother's father was an ardent football fan, and when NBC preempted the game for Heidi he jumped out of his chair, stomped his feet, jumped up and down, and bellowed "I. DON'T. CARE. ABOUT. HEIDI!!!!!!" "Oh Jim, grow up!" Grandma clapped back, and that only made Grandpa madder. "TURN THAT OFF!!!" he ordered, storming out of the room. Mama was irate at being disallowed to see Heidi, Uncle From St. Louis was almost as peeved as Grandpa about the ballgame, and as usual Uncle Man-Child had his head up his rear. Even now Mama and I still talk about it, and she always says that the house was "shakin'." Having seen a clip of Heidi and her male companion, I think I'd have been on the side of the football game.
PETER: When I grow up, I don't expect I'll marry you.
HEIDI: Why not?
PETER: Because you're silly!
HEIDI: Maybe when I grow up I won't be silly!
Seriously...if I'd been in Heidi's shoes the conversation would've gone more like this.
PETER: When I grow up, I don't expect I'll marry you.
ME AS HEIDI: Thank God. I've got more important things to do than darn your lousy socks.
LOL, I NEVER would've made it back in 1881, when Heidi was published as a book. I'm about as domestic as a capybara. Anywho, the Heidi Bowl created ripples that are still undulating to this day. NBC officials had given the OK to keep the game running despite their promise to Timex, but they were unable to communicate to each other due to blown fuses at telephone switchboards (caused by home viewers calling with their own questions). After the Heidi mess NBC had a special phone and phone line put in to allow officials to communicate during times of high phone traffic. This phone was christened the "Heidi phone," a moniker that lives to this day, fifty-five years after the fact. In this day and age regular programming is almost always the one to be preempted, as was shown in 1975. One YouTuber called an incident that year the "reverse Heidi game," when Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was joined in progress after a long-running game between the Raiders (yep, them again) and the Redskins. REDSKINS, DAMMIT!!! I will NEVER root for the "Commanders"! Anyway, NBC drew fire from parents for the Willy Wonka incident, but apparently not as much as they did after the Heidi Bowl. Fans of television and football trivia remember it, but the public doesn't seem to remember "Wonkagate," as I jokingly call it. Admittedly joining such a flick in progress was a dumb move, but so is preempting the end of an exciting game!
Love and football,
RagingMoon1987
As is often the case with anything weird, my family has their own memories. My mother's father was an ardent football fan, and when NBC preempted the game for Heidi he jumped out of his chair, stomped his feet, jumped up and down, and bellowed "I. DON'T. CARE. ABOUT. HEIDI!!!!!!" "Oh Jim, grow up!" Grandma clapped back, and that only made Grandpa madder. "TURN THAT OFF!!!" he ordered, storming out of the room. Mama was irate at being disallowed to see Heidi, Uncle From St. Louis was almost as peeved as Grandpa about the ballgame, and as usual Uncle Man-Child had his head up his rear. Even now Mama and I still talk about it, and she always says that the house was "shakin'." Having seen a clip of Heidi and her male companion, I think I'd have been on the side of the football game.
PETER: When I grow up, I don't expect I'll marry you.
HEIDI: Why not?
PETER: Because you're silly!
HEIDI: Maybe when I grow up I won't be silly!
Seriously...if I'd been in Heidi's shoes the conversation would've gone more like this.
PETER: When I grow up, I don't expect I'll marry you.
ME AS HEIDI: Thank God. I've got more important things to do than darn your lousy socks.
LOL, I NEVER would've made it back in 1881, when Heidi was published as a book. I'm about as domestic as a capybara. Anywho, the Heidi Bowl created ripples that are still undulating to this day. NBC officials had given the OK to keep the game running despite their promise to Timex, but they were unable to communicate to each other due to blown fuses at telephone switchboards (caused by home viewers calling with their own questions). After the Heidi mess NBC had a special phone and phone line put in to allow officials to communicate during times of high phone traffic. This phone was christened the "Heidi phone," a moniker that lives to this day, fifty-five years after the fact. In this day and age regular programming is almost always the one to be preempted, as was shown in 1975. One YouTuber called an incident that year the "reverse Heidi game," when Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was joined in progress after a long-running game between the Raiders (yep, them again) and the Redskins. REDSKINS, DAMMIT!!! I will NEVER root for the "Commanders"! Anyway, NBC drew fire from parents for the Willy Wonka incident, but apparently not as much as they did after the Heidi Bowl. Fans of television and football trivia remember it, but the public doesn't seem to remember "Wonkagate," as I jokingly call it. Admittedly joining such a flick in progress was a dumb move, but so is preempting the end of an exciting game!
Love and football,
RagingMoon1987
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