Five Decades of Fandom

By: D. Scott Fritchen

Tufts of white hair spill from beneath a gray Powercat ballcap, a toothy smile causing the edges of a trimmed white beard to spread like curtains. Robert Lipson, the 72-year-old Kansas State superfan who's dedicated fifty years of his life to following the Wildcats to every conference game away from Manhattan — 202 consecutive conference road games, to be exact — is happy.

The day is drizzly, and Robert brightens up the press box at Bill Snyder Family Stadium while bearing his soul and his treasure, which he carries in a Ziploc bag. He has evidence of his every step along this journey. He has kept every single ticket — he has receipts, as some people like to say today — and every single ticket is cataloged in an envelope, and each envelope is organized by order of year, from 1973 to 2022, and each envelope is stacked and placed in the Ziploc bag.

"In my left hand is the first ticket," Robert says. "Forgive me, I used to carry these tickets around in my pockets, so they got a little worn down. Here, in my right hand, is 2022 TCU 2.0."

Robert holds each ticket and smiles as if they're Mickey Mantle rookie baseball cards. It's his whole world. It's the old and the new, his youth and his age, that he holds feet apart in his hands. It's two conference road games, five decades apart, for one beloved K-State.

"2022 TCU 2.0" is otherwise known as the 2022 Big 12 Championship Game at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas on December 3, which marked the second time that K-State faced TCU away from Manhattan in the 2022 season. The "2022 TCU 2.0" ticket is not a ticket at all, really. Instead, it is a letter-sized piece of paper, a print off, an electronic ticket, with black bold letters that read: "UPPER CONCOURSE - SECTION 442 / ROW 14 – SEAT 11."

The 2022 Big 12 Championship Game, the thrilling 31-28 overtime victory over TCU, was supposed to mark the 200^th consecutive conference road game that Robert had attended in a streak that dates to the Sunflower Showdown on October 13, 1973. But alas, upon a recent recount, followed by a slow, make-sure-we-really-get-it-right recount, Robert discovered that the Big 12 Championship Game was in fact his 202^nd consecutive conference road game.

Game No. 200 was actually the Wildcats' 31-3 win at Baylor on November 12.

"First of all, I want to apologize to the K-State fans just like the zebras apologized for the fifth-down game between Colorado and Missouri," Robert says. "No matter how many times they reviewed it, Colorado had five downs — not four. I was so sure TCU 2.0 was my 200^th consecutive conference road game. I could've stood in front of my Lord Jesus and told him, 'This is my 200^th consecutive road game in conference,' and my nose would not grow.

"But I did a recount. What can I tell you? Zebras make mistakes and so do I. But I cannot be more proud of the accomplishment. This is about team. Everything is about the team. There is no 'I' in the word 'Team.' But I cannot thank K-State fans enough for their unbelievable support."

Robert has his unique lingo. Robert has his unique style. The purple foam No. 1 finger that he totes across Ames, Austin, Lawrence, Lubbock, Morgantown, Norman, Ft. Worth, Stillwater and Waco, might as well stand for "One — Robert Lipson." Because Robert is truly one of a kind — in all the best ways possible.

For years, he's greeted K-State players as they come off the team bus at the team hotel and he's been known to give a pep-talk or two to the K-State football team as well. In the early years, he even helped unload football equipment from the team truck. His presence has touched the presidential terms of Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Closer to home, his presence has touched the careers of K-State head coaches Vince Gibson, Ellis Rainsberger, Jim Dickey, Stan Parrish, Bill Snyder, Ron Prince, Bill Snyder again, and Chris Klieman.

Five decades.

Robert is a pillar of consistency in this ever-changing world of college football.

Five decades.

"Over the years, Robert grew into one of the most recognizable fans in college football," Snyder wrote in his autobiography. "At about 5-foot-6, Robert didn't stand out because of his size, but he was always recognizable to fans because of the large purple foam No. 1 finger and transistor radio that he carried so he could listen to the radio commentary."

When Robert's streak began, he could fill up his vehicle for 39 cents per gallon. Except he doesn't remember the exact vehicle, because he's gone through so many vehicles over the sands of time, many of them being subcompact pickups with a cab where he could sleep the night before games. His old Nissan truck had just enough room to sleep through the night in Ames. These days, he drives a bright red Kia Soul, and its headlights cut through the Manhattan fog on this drizzly 40-degree Monday afternoon as he nears the Bill Snyder statue outside of the West Stadium Center.

He poses with the foam finger next to the statue of Hall-of-Famer Bill Snyder, the man he lovingly calls, "William the Conqueror."

"The streak began against the Kansas Jayhawks on October 13, 1973, a real gut punch I'm still trying to forget about," Robert says of the Wildcats' 25-18 loss in Lawrence. "Somebody missed a block and there was a loused-up handoff between Steve Grogan and the halfback and KU recovered the fumble. We were running down the clock and boy were we cheering.

"Then we beat Colorado, 17-14. Remember 1979 against the Missouri Tigers? I never saw so many athletes on a team bench. I remember we scored on a halfback-option pass wide open in the end zone and we led 19-3 at the half. The radio announcer said, 'There is nothing wrong with your radio. That is the score.' That was the final score.

"Then in 1982, we beat Iowa State (9-3) and we were deadly serious that we weren't going to lose that game. We had Steve Willis, who could hit a field goal a mile away. After the game, the players were absolutely gallivanting inside the locker room.

"On November 5, 1983, we tied the score 20-all and we shanked the point-after attempt but the goalposts were wide and it barely made it in. Then the Oklahoma State Cowboys tried a long field goal, about 59 or 62 yards, that was accurate but it was short. It was an amazing victory (21-20)."

Robert's dedication is perhaps unmatched in college athletics and here's why: Between 1973 and 1990, he traveled to 63 consecutive conference road games and witnessed a total of five victories. Who else in America has made 63 trips, traveling hundreds of miles, only to leave heartbroken 58 times?

Robert's eyes have always remained hopeful. He has hopeful eyes. And yes, during the lean years of K-State football, and there were so many years, Robert's tale was a tragedy — the young man absorbing gut-punch after gut-punch from the team that he dearly loves, only to return hopeful again, and again, and bearing that No. 1 foam finger.

He's a dreamer. He's a believer. He was there when K-State shocked the world with its 35-7 victory over top-ranked and unbeaten Oklahoma in the 2003 Big 12 Championship Game at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri.

"Nobody gave us a chance," he says. "In fact, CBS put the SEC Championship directly opposite our game. The announcers were probably told to tell interesting stories in the event of a blowout. Sure enough, Oklahoma went up 7-0 on a long run. Then we beat them and it was like the Jets winning the 1969 Super Bowl. Exactly the same. Nobody gave them a chance and nobody gave us a chance. It was an amazing win."

Robert's streak appeared to be in jeopardy before it could really gain steam — November 22, 1975, as the Wildcats closed out their season at No. 9 Colorado. The Wildcats lost, 33-7, but that's not what Robert remembers the most.

"I had befriended somebody I met in the K-State Union cafeteria," he says. "We took his car, but his car broke down. I missed the entire first half of the 1975 Colorado game and got in a couple minutes into the second half, but I have my ticket to prove I was there. That's the closest one I ever missed. We drove and he had trouble making it over there and then the car completely broke down after the game. We couldn't hitchhike, so I called my bank and got money for bus tickets.

"That was so close."

His 50^th consecutive conference road game was at Missouri in 1987. His 100^th game was at Nebraska in 1999.

Then there's the entire 2020 COVID-ravaged season with road games at Oklahoma, TCU, West Virginia, Iowa State and Baylor. Every week was uncertain. A total of 22,700 fans witnessed the Wildcats' thrilling 38-35 win at No. 3 Oklahoma, but fewer than 13,000 fans attended the remainder of the road games due to spacing regulations in public places, including stadiums. Fortunately, Robert was able to make it to every game.

"How many fans can cay that they went to all the 2020 conference road games?" he says. "It was a very bizarre situation."

Last season marked his 25^th consecutive trip to Lawrence for the Sunflower Showdown. And he showed up with a white sign outlined with the state of Kansas. Inside the sign, in bold purple type, it read: "WE OWN THIS STATE." It's a sign that he designed nearly a decade ago and that has become a mainstay at all Sunflower Showdowns — K-State currently rides a series-record 14 straight wins against Kansas — and a sign that has caught fire among fans. He further supplemented the sign with a "BIG XII" sign that he hands out to a few students at the Sunflower Showdown or when the Wildcats play a non-conference Power 5 opponent.

"I'll be having more of those signs made for the Alabama game," he says.

Robert was born on August 30, 1950 in Liberty, New York. Upon graduating from Liberty High School, he attended Farmingdale State College, which at the time was a junior college.

"My first three semesters were miserable," he says. "I suffered from anxiety at the time. I flunked out and they let me back in and I carried between a 3.25 and 3.4 GPA."

Robert transferred to K-State in fall 1972. The plan was to land a career in biology. Didn't last. Anxiety, that crippling old friend, took over, ravaging his academic career. Robert could barely open a text book without shutting down. He dropped out after five semesters. But it was while attending K-State's 67-66 win over Kansas in Ahearn Field House on February 13, 1973 that something clicked, a romance was born, and Robert fell in love with the Wildcats.

"The basketball team was down 13 points with six minutes and change to go," he says. "Remember, there was no 3-point shot and there was no shot clock. Students go up and roared, the whole field house roared, and they willed the team back into the game. We beat the Kansas Jayhawks 67-66 and I just fell in love with the Wildcats. I was young and enthusiastic and wanted to see all the Big Eight venues.

"There was no way I could complete the mission by attending every road basketball game. I knew that then. My only streaks in basketball are that I've attended 50 straight games at Allen Fieldhouse since 1973, including Big Eight and Big 12 Tournaments.

"I knew I couldn't complete the mission in basketball, so I made it about road games against conference opponents in football. When we play Missouri next season, it will not count because Missouri is no longer a conference opponent."

Shortly after embarking upon this journey, and upon leaving the classroom, Robert picked up a helmet and a shovel and served as a manual worker, at times working seven days a week for three consecutive weeks during blistering summers in Manhattan. Then Robert became an independent sales distributor whenever outdoor labor demands were sparce. On June 1, 1990, Robert began fulltime work as an independent sales distributor, and when that didn't work out, he began a career at Brown & Bigelow on September 27, 1992, becoming a distributor of office supplies across the Manhattan area. His business card reads: "Account Executive."

He has made K-State his business for five decades.

Five decades.

"It's an honor to do this for all these K-State fans," he says.

He sits at a table in the press box and places the 1973 ticket and the 2022 tickets back into their proper homes. He begins to count his envelopes. Each one unlocks a story. Then another one. And another one. The year is written upon each envelope in bold marker. Underneath the year, written in pen, are the dates and locations of all conference road games that he attended that given year.

He stacks the envelopes and begins to count.

One… two… three… four… five… and this one goes back here… one… two… three… four… five… and then six.

Then he zips up the Ziploc, grabs his No. 1 foam finger, takes the press box elevator down six floors and walks past the Bill Snyder statue. He pauses and turns around.

"Thank you for the talk," he says. "Enjoy the rest of the decade."

Next stop: New Orleans.

Kansas State University Athletics

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