A classic (to American football fans, anyway) example of "it ain't over till it's over" is the so-called "Heidi Game" of November 1968. Two long-time rival teams, the Oakland Raiders and the New York Jets, were playing a game late Sunday afternoon, which was televised as usual. What wasn't usual about this particular Sunday was that NBC, the television network broadcasting the game, had a special movie presentation of
Heidi scheduled to air at 7:00PM that night. The network had promoted the movie heavily all week and millions of viewers were expected to tune in for this special heart-warming family event.
But the football game took many unexpected turns - several injuries and many time-outs caused the game to run longer than the three hours NBC had allotted for the broadcast. There were just two minutes left on the game's official clock at 7PM, and the Jets were leading with 32 points to the Raiders' 29. NBC executives made the decision to cut away from the game at 7PM and broadcast
Heidi as scheduled (There are only two minutes left, they figured; what could happen? The Jets have won the game). But Oakland miraculously managed to score two touchdowns in those final two minutes of the game, and they won the game with a score of 43 to 32. Of course, this historic upset was missed by most TV viewers, who had to watch a little blonde girl in the Swiss Alps instead.