super fan heads to the super bowl

Jim Lipscomb will be joining his beloved Cincinnati Bengals at the Super Bowl.

The 86-year-old was at the first-ever Bengals game in 1968, and immediately “fell for them,” he told CBS News. Lipscomb was a season ticket holder for years, and never misses a game on television. When the team won last month’s playoffs against the Chiefs and earned their ticket to Super Bowl LVI in Los Angeles, Lipscomb’s granddaughter, Lizzie Eschenbrenner, watched as he started crying tears of joy. She shared his reaction on social media, and the video soon went viral.

Eschenbrenner started thinking about how much it would mean for her grandfather to watch the game in person, and launched a fundraiser to see if she could raise enough money to get him to L.A. The tickets ranged in price from nearly $5,000 to more than $18,000, and thanks to donations from around the world, she raised $42,000.

“I was blown away at the response … [and] all the nice words they had to say,” Eschenbrenner told CBS News, adding that “even though we can’t physically take them with us, I feel like we’re taking the spirit of all grandpas and all loved ones that want to go to the Super Bowl.” The generosity shown by strangers made Lipscomb tear up yet again. “The number of people that have donated, from different countries, it’s just mind-boggling to me,” he said.