Hello and thanks in advance for the help.

I am working on a workbook with over 2000 rows. The first row is a header row.
rows 2 and 3 are related - 4 and 5 are related (and so on)
Cell A not important to this issue
Cells B2 and B3 contains item names
Cell C not important to this issue
Cell D not important to this issue
Cells E2 and E3 contain a numeric values
Cells F2 and F3 are merged and contains a formula that will compare the numeric values in cells E2 and E3 and display the name of the item from cells B2 or B3 with the greater value or the word "tie" if the values are equal. (that formula is done)

What I need help on is sorting by the merged cells in column F without messing up the data in other columns.
If that is not possible, Is there a way to highlight the entire row (one color for item name 1 and another color for item name 2) Not worried about the ones that say "tied"