sweet treats bracket

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I grew up in a household with three sisters and, not to play the gender card, I do feel like there are some things I missed out on from having grown up with a strongly female household. One of those areas where I feel like I’m lacking is my sports knowledge. I mean, I ran track and cross country in junior high and the rules are pretty simple. You run until you get to the end and stop. Then I swam in high school and again the rules are pretty simple; you swim to the end and stop. Lastly, I rowed on the Crew team in college; the rules to that are also fairly straightforward—row to the end and stop.

I’ve never really followed sports all that closely and a lot of the rules and terminology are over my head. Now that I have a little man of my own (and a sports-loving husband) I decided that I had to change things, and, with The Big Tournament coming up, I thought this was the perfect opportunity to expand my sports knowledge. With the help of my husband, as well as OREO cookies and Coca-Cola Zero™, I had a little primer lesson in sports brackets, and I’d like to share my new-found knowledge with you!

We went to our local Safeway store to pick out our contenders for our sweet treats bracket. It was easy to locate the OREO cookies and Coke Zero because at my Safeway location their aisles are right next to each other. The hard part was trying to narrow it down to just eight flavors of OREO cookies –there were probably at least double that available! Then it was a tough call between glass bottles, 2-liters, or cans of Coke Zero; I find making decisions difficult. Then we found some Coke Zero cans that have basketballs on them—perfect for our bracket!

Once we got home from Safeway the bracket education started. By the way, you can get your own sweet treats bracket //here//. I wasn’t sure how we should decide on the flavor match-ups so my sweet husband taught me all about seeding.

• Seed= how well a competitor is expected to perform.

We talked about the different flavors of OREO cookies and various drink mix-ins we had gotten and decided how we thought they would place. Of course there was some contention over this because my husband doesn’t share the same love of chocolate soda that I do… apparently there isn’t really a scientific method to a sweet treats bracket. Eventually we came up with our order and Mike showed me the proper places for your first seed, second seed, etc.

Then, all that was left was the very arduous task of picking the winner of each round. ;) First up for Team OREO was Golden OREO and Red Velvet OREO. For Team Coke Zero it was a match-up between cherry and chocolate; and so we continued through all the rounds until it was down to our final competitors: Red Velvet OREO against Mint OREO, and Coke Zero with Cherry mix-in against Coke Zero with Raspberry mix-in.

Who were our winners?...

…you’ll have to make your own sweet treats bracket and determine that for yourself. I will say that we definitely had some upsets along the way that made it a fun and interesting learning experience; as well as a delicious one. ;)

• Upset= when the competitor highly expected to win (the favorite) loses to an underdog.

In case you are curious about our chosen flavors for our sweet treats bracket, here they are in order of seeding:

• Team OREO: Red Velvet, Mint, Filled Cupcake, Peanut Butter, Original, Lemon, Cinnamon Bun, and Golden.
• Mix-Ins for Team Coke Zero: Cherry, Vanilla, Lemon, Original (no mix-in flavor), Lime, Raspberry, Coconut, and Chocolate.

With my new-found knowledge I am feeling pumped for The Big Tournament! You can get your hands on a sweet treats bracket //here// or a blank copy //here//. This would be such a fun activity to do while you watch with your friends and family, and don’t forget to visit cokeplaytowin.com/tastethemadness for a chance to win NCAA prizes. How do you prepare for The Big Tournament? 

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