Four-decade Bengals fan is Super Bowl-bound and hoping to see history

The Riverside resident and Carroll High School grad wants “to have a lot of fun and bring a win home” for the Bengals, her favorite team for more than 40 years.

The 56-year-old McCoy said she jumped at the chance to be “along for the ride” when her season-ticket holding sister and brother-in-law landed Super Bowl tickets through friends — and offered her one.

“I said I would clean out my vacation account if I need to do the trip,” McCoy said.

Catching Bengals fever in the late 1970s, she recalls it was aided later by her teenage attraction to wide receiver Cris Collinsworth, who helped the Bengals reach Super Bowls in January of 1982 and 1989, before falling to the 49ers both times.

McCoy’s allegiance then weathered more than a dozen non-winning seasons and continued in more recent years, withstanding the barbs that sometimes accompany sports loyalty when your favorite franchise is on the downside.

“I’ve hung in there through the good and the bad,” she said. “And I’ve taken a lot of grief from friends who are not Bengals fans.

“But you pick your team and you either like them or you don’t and you go with it,” McCoy added. “You can’t jump off and on the bandwagon.”

As this season went on, McCoy said she saw signs that made her optimistic.

“I think toward the end of the season I saw the team really coming together and I knew it was either going to be we’d make it to the playoffs and win a game and be done or hopefully win a second game and keep progressing,” she said.

She was at Paul Brown Stadium when the Bengals edged Kansas City to clinch the AFC North Division title in what was a playoff precursor.

The Raiders game two weeks later at PBS “was cold, but that stadium was packed and pretty much everybody stood for the whole game. I can’t even explain how great it was to be there and how excited all of the fans were,” McCoy said.

“That was probably the loudest I’ve ever heard that stadium,” she added. “It’s like everybody finally came together. We knew we could pull it off and we did.”

Keeping “that positive attitude” in the Bengals’ three playoff games that were all decided in the last few minutes has been a key, McCoy said.

“I said we’re going to win these games and it’s going to be toward the end of the game,” she said. “It’s going to come down to a last-minute score or we’re going to hit overtime.

“So I have a feeling the Super Bowl is going to be the same way,” McCoy added.

She hopes that “the 33-year drought will ... come to an end and it might be the last minute. But I’d like to see us bring a win home.”

BENGALS FAN FAVORITE MEMORY

Barb McCoy said it’s difficult to choose one favorite, but some of the best are of the late 1980s and early 1990s teams. They include “the Ickey Shuffle and the two Super Bowls — definitely the last one in 89.”