Welcome back, everyone. The bracket is set, your picks are locked, your excuses are already being prepared, and somewhere out there a 12-seed is getting ready to ruin your bracket by Friday afternoon. It is, as always, the most wonderful time of the year.

For those of you doing this for the first time: welcome. You will not win. But neither will the person who has been doing this for fifteen years, so you're in good company. For those of you returning: you already know the drill. You thought about it too hard, second-guessed your gut, and talked yourself into a Final Four that will be eliminated by Sunday night. This is the way.

As we do every year, I’ll be tracking a collection of celebrity and novelty brackets alongside your real picks all tournament long. These exist because there is nothing more satisfying — or more humbling — than losing to Bugs Bunny in the Elite Eight. I’ll use them for running commentary throughout, and I promise you: by Sweet Sixteen weekend, at least one of them will be beating half of you. I’ll be continuing to add them as I find them, but here are some that are already in the field.  They are in all caps and have zero for the tiebreak, making them easy to follow:

🎲 Pure Chaos Methods

Coin Flip
Heads or tails, every game, no exceptions. The purest expression of basketball nihilism available to us.

Mascot Bracket
Which mascot wins in a fight? Simple question. Extremely contentious answers. Your answers may vary.

All Chalk
Every favorite, every game, no upsets. The bracket of a coward. Gets torched by Thursday of Week 1.

Famous Alumni
Whichever school has the more famous graduates advances. The basketball team is irrelevant. 

🗳️ Political & Geographic

Blue States
Schools in Democratic-leaning states advance. A test of whether the coasts know basketball, or just think they do.

Red States
Schools in Republican-leaning states advance. Spoiler alert, this is way more teams this year.

🌟 Celebrity Brackets

President Obama
The Baller in Chief. Takes this seriously. May actually know something about basketball. Threat level: real.

Zac Brown
Country music royalty enters the pool for the first time. Unclear methodology. Southern bias strongly suspected.

Snoop Dogg
A man of many talents, brackets among them. Goes with the vibes. Shockingly competitive historically.

Jimmy Fallon
Late night’s contribution to the pool. Has done really, really poorly in the past. Probably asked his writers for help. Probably ignored them.

Metallica
Methodology unknown but one assumes it favors aggression. Enter Sandman, exit seed lines.

Andy Katz
The one bracket that’s supposed to know what it’s doing. We include it to have something to humble.

Diego Pavia
Vanderbilt’s record-breaking QB and unfathomable douchebag. Let’s see how that translates here.

Yung Gravy
Your guess is as good as mine tbh.

📱 Internet Brackets

The Rizzler
Know this: the guy has rizz. Will that translate into a great bracket? If you have to ask, you don’t have the rizz to understand it.

Jordan The Stallion
Massive platform. Unknowable methodology. We are simply along for the ride.

Amir "Aura" Khan
His bracket radiates something. Whether that something is basketball knowledge is the three-week experiment.

🐰 The Wildcard

Bugs Bunny
He beat the Monstars. He will not be intimidated by 64 college basketball teams. The smartest analyst in this field, technically.

There will be updates. There will be trash talk. There will be at least one moment where the Coin Flip bracket outperforms your carefully researched picks and you just have to sit with that.

Real-time standings live at the official tracking site. May your upsets be someone else's. May your Final Four survive the first weekend.

— Jamie