You can fill out a college basketball bracket if you want but this year, thankfully, there’s a super-sweet alternative. Welcome to the Best Candy Ever Tournament, a sixty-four candy contest that is sure to give you extra energy, dislodge fillings and, should you find it necessary to eat all sixty-four treats to help you feel confident in your selections, render you unable to button your pants by Easter.

It works just like your typical NCAA tournament bracket – sixty-four candy treats in four divisions playing a single-elimination, battle royale to crown the ultimate candy champion. You pick all the winners, from first-round action to the Sweet Sixteen to the Final Four to the one candy concoction you can’t resist.

The top four seeds in each division are bound to give you a sugar rush. The Candy Bar Division is totally stacked with Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups as the top seed followed by Kit-Kat, Peanut M&Ms and Snickers. The Traditional Division is wide open. The one seed is Red Vines but you can never count out root beer barrels, jelly beans or Andes Mints. Over in the Chewy Division, Sour Patch Kids is a serious threat, but lots of people like gummi bears and Rolos and sour/spring cherries. And the competition in the Crunchy Division is, well, mouth-watering as Skittles are top ranked, followed by Jolly Ranchers, SweeTarts and, somewhat surprisingly, Nerds.

Needless to say, there are some sweet first-round matchups. I mean right off the top, number one Red Vines has to take on black licorice. People have a definite love-hate with black licorice, but Red Vines would be wise not to look past them. There are some epic traditional match-ups, how about root beer barrels taking on lemon drops or Pez and Necco Wafers or jelly beans versus candy corn. Rolos vs. Swedish Fish is very interesting as is Butterfinger taking on Pay Day. And, as you know, when Baby Bottle Pop plays Ring Pop, you just need to throw the records out.

Anyway, I really wanna see who wins and I hope you all will play and share this bracket with your friends and enemies.

One thing you should keep in mind is, when evaluating matchups that involve candies with different flavors, like Jolly Ranchers or Laffy Taffy or Now & Later or Mentos or Lifesavers, you should view it as if you’re eating your favorite flavor of that candy (like maybe watermelon Jolly Ranchers and banana Laffy Taffy).

I will blog out our tournament’s progress at Sweet Sixteen, Final Four and championship milestones. The Sweet Sixteen doesn’t start until March 22, 2018, so you have plenty of time to complete your bracket and share it with others.

How To Play
You have options. 1) Open the PDF below, print it, fill it out, send a photo of it (with your name) to pmacke81@gmail.com … 2) there’s also an Excel version below, if you have Excel you can open it, fill in the fields (you may need to “enable editing”), save a copy and email it to me as an attachment, pmacke81@gmail.com … 3) send an email to me at pmacke81@gmail.com simply listing your Sweet 16, Elite 8, Final Four, finalists and champion.

Some people view the NCAA basketball tournament as life & death, the Best Candy Ever Tournament is much more important than that.

candybracketpdf

candybracketxcel