"We're doing this for him" - Bengals want to win Super Bowl to honor Harambe

Harambe is now a rallying cry. The Cincinnati Bengals have been to the Super Bowl thrice without winning a ring, and they will look to break that duck when they face the Los Angeles Rams on Sunday, February 13, 2022.

Despite these lofty goals at the end of a Cinderella-style season, one Cincinnati player is making sure to win the big game for a very specific reason. Defensive end Sam Hubbard stated that he wants his team to win the Super Bowl as a tribute to Harambe, the gorilla who was killed at the Cincinnati Zoo in 2016.

On the Pardon My Take podcast, the hosts asked Hubbard about the depths of Harambe’s inspiration to the team, and the defensive end answered:

"Sweet Prince, I mean, that's our guy. That's our hero. I think that's known, kind of goes without saying. You know, we're doing this for him."

Who was Harambe?

Harambe was a 17-year-old western lowland gorilla at the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden. In 2016, Harambe was killed by a zoo worker after a three-year old boy climbed into the gorilla’s pen. The zoo worker was prompted to shoot the ape when it began dragging the child across the enclosure. Footage of the incident went viral and has since been the subject of numerous memes and vigorous coverage at an international level.

The posthumous celebrity of Harambe continued on the internet and in Cincinnati. In 2017, ahead of a Cincinnati Bengals vs. Buffalo Bills game, a car dealership in New York made a reference to Harambe on a billboard that read, “You can replace Dalton, You can’t replace Harambe.”

While the Bengals have replaced former starter Andy Dalton, rising star Joe Burrow hopes to take the franchise to new heights, starting with the upcoming Super Bowl. Given the team's devil-may-care attitude and how no one expected them to go to the Super Bowl, Harambe is the perfect spiritual mascot for these underdog Bengals.

The Cincinnati Bengals take on the 4.5-point favorites Los Angeles Rams on Sunday, February 13, 2022, at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, CA for the Super Bowl.