The Diamond Dogs were playing as cold as the chilly night air in Dudy Noble Tuesday, down 5-2 and in danger of suffering their first loss of the season to UAB. Then one fan jumped to his feet in the bottom of the seventh and used his maroon jacket and white sweatshirt to spark a familiar chant in the frozen stadium. The Bulldog bats came to life and they won on a lead-off pair of back-to-back homers in the bottom of the ninth.
Coincidence?
All season long, the Lady Bulldogs played in front of sparse crowds in The Hump, but some of their biggest wins, such as over No. 9 Georgia, happened in front of small but rocking crowds led by a fan pointing from one side of the arena to the other, directing competing cheers of “Maroon and White.”
Coincidence?
And when fans of MSU men’s basketball hear one fan’s impossibly loud stomp-stomp, clap-clap, they instinctively know to join in because the Bulldogs, a team that feeds off emotion like candy, need some fresh energy to change the direction of the game. One game with questionable calls aside, it always works.
Coincidence?
No coincidence. That is just what naturally happens when Ron “The Candyman” Caulfield decides it’s time to get the crowd going.
Caulfield, a true superfan of Mississippi State sports, said it just takes one person to be willing to jumpstart the crowd.
“People wanna holler,” he said. “But they don’t wanna be the first person to do it.”
Caulfield, a 1975 graduate of MSU, said he always wanted to be a cheerleader in his college days. But it was in his later years that he could fulfill that dream.
Men’s basketball coach Rick Stansbury said The Candyman is one of the most loyal Bulldog fans he has seen in his long tenure at MSU.
“No question, he’s one of those guys in that Hump that creates some spirit, creates some atmosphere,” Stansbury said. “He’s not afraid to stand up and yell and shout, or yell and shout at anybody.”
So why then the nickname “The Candyman?”
Before MSU played Alabama Wednesday night, an unidentified woman approached him. Without missing a beat, Caulfield reached down into a maroon bag and brought out a jumbo Tootsie Roll and handed it to the woman.
“I knew you wouldn’t let me down,” she said, smiling and giving The Candyman a hug before continuing on.
The Candyman said it all started at a baseball weekend in 1998 at Texas A&M.
“We met some really nice folks out there, and the next year they came to our Super Bulldog Weekend,” he said. “And during the baseball game they said, ‘you need to throw out candy.’ They had a couple of bags, and I started passing out some candy. The people in the skyboxes went crazier than the kids. It all started at baseball, and then it progressed to football, basketball, to soccer, to everything.”
MSU alumnus and longtime hoops fan, Di Canizaro said the Candyman brings fans together and helps makes it a community.
“The Candyman rocks,” she said. “I like the way he makes strangers connect with indulgent smiles as they pass his candy bag [around].”
Caulfield said he always came to MSU sports events from his home in Jackson, but since retiring five years ago and moving to Starkville, he has made being a fan almost like a full-time job. He said he attends practically all sports at MSU. He is not sponsored by the university and pays his own way into games.
However, fans often help out, through the candy bag he passes around.
“I just do it on my own, with some donations here and there,” Caulfield said. “I’ll go around and all of a sudden there will be money in the bag. I don’t ask for it. I do it because I love it.”
Caulfield said the great thing about college sports is the sense of community, something he said cannot be found in professional sports.
“I could care less about the pros,” he said. “There are the big ones like the Super Bowl, but watching an actual pro game, the excitement is not there. What I like about here, is everybody is family.”
Caulfield said he does not have a favorite sport.
“Mississippi State [is my favorite sport],” he said. “I come to all sports – baseball, volleyball, softball, basketball men and women’s. I’ve got my calendar all marked up.”
He said he goes to all the different sports because they all deserve the support. And he said he feels like it is like his job to excite other fans too, especially when the athletes need it the most during big games or hard moments.
“They need the support when they’re down, more than when they’re up,” he said. “Since I’ve been doing this 11 years, everybody knows who this idiot is. They know to stand up, and if they don’t, I’m going to get in their face. But that’s the thing. Like I said, everybody wants to, but you need to just get that one or two people to get it started.”