When the Bengals beat the Chiefs in the AFC championship game, securing their spot in the Super Bowl, 86-year-old Bengals superfan Jim Lipscomb had a tearful reaction. His granddaughter, Lizzie Eschenbrenner, posted a video of the moment on Facebook and it went viral. When his daughter asked how happy he was to see them going back to the Super Bowl he cried "Oh God I can't stand it"!
On Jim's 32'nd birthday he went to the Bengals very first game in the NFL on August 3rd, 1968. They lost that game to the Chiefs, but Lipscomb “fell for them” and went out and bought season tickets the very next day. He became so obsessed with the Bengals that he would write unsolicited scouting reports on their opponents and mail them to the team the week before a game. He and his family have had season tickets ever since. He says he has seen every play of every game they have ever played thanks to TV. He went to the Bengals first Super Bowl in 1982 in Michigan which they lost to the 49'ers and in 1989 went to their their second in Miami...which they also lost to the 49'ers. He hopes that the third time is the charm especially since they have an opponent other than the 49'ers!
When people started asking how they could help get Lipscomb to see his team play in the big game, Lizzie set up a GoFundMe page. Within a couple of days, more than two-thousand donors from around the world had raised more than $42-thousand to send Lipscomb and a caretaker to Super Bowl LVI in Los Angeles. "I was blown away at the response. People on social media, all the nice words they had to say, it really restored my faith in humanity that there is still good out there," Lizzie says in an interview with CBS News, as Lipscomb started tearing up. "And now grandpa's crying again."
Lizzie thinks her grandfather’s story resonates with many of the donors because he reminds them of their own fathers or grandfathers. "I feel like we're taking the spirit of all grandpas and all loved ones that want to go to the Super Bowl," she says. When asked how he’d feel if the Bengals were to win the Super Bowl, Lipscomb just says, "The Bengals are going to win.” And then his granddaughter says, "Straight from Cincinnati's grandpa, everyone. The Bengals are going to win.”