Yeah, I filled out a bracket or two. No, I didn’t catch much College Basketball this year. I HAVE A FUCKING BABY.

You think I have time for College Basketball? Hell no: I HAVE A FUCKING BABY.

I am just way too busy with catching up on “Justified” and “Fringe” and “Community” and finally watching the “Seinfeld” reunion on ” Curb” and reading Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom (loved it) and my friend’s debut novel The Kitchen Daughter (buy it!) and watching The Karate Kid remake on demand and watching the original Karate Kid EVERY SINGLE TIME IT’S ON and getting my growler filled and going to the gym to prepare for bikini season and making sure to DVR “Parenthood” so I can watch it with my wife because we’re parents now and also MINKA KELLY IS ON IT SOMETIMES.

So no, Mr. Carefree Childless Partyguy, I didn’t have a chance to catch a lot of College Basketball games this year. You know I HAVE A FUCKING BABY, right? Jesus.

That said, despite my largely guess-filled brackets, I can say with pride that I didn’t succumb to the world’s cheesiest method for picking my final four:

I didn’t put a pen in my infant son’s hand and let him accidentally mark a few teams; I didn’t cut out the names of the 64 teams (screw these stupid play-in games) and put the first few he accidentally touched in my Final Four; I didn’t scrawl the names of a few teams in his diapers and then determine my winners and losers by which ones he shit on.

No, because even though my baby probably knows as much about who is going to advance in the tourney as I do, it’s just plain cheesy to give him influence over my brackets. The little blob of flesh already owns every other aspect of my life, why would I want to sully this glorious tradition with his overwhelming cuteness? Stressing out over every halftime lead, agonizing over every late run, tearing out my hair every time some piss-ant school comes within a shot of knocking off my champ – these are things I need to experience in a vacuum, without the all-consuming reality of parenthood.

Let me drink my beer and ignore my wife and scrutinize my brackets to determine what bizarre sequence of events needs to occur for me to have even the smallest shot at winning third place and getting my fee back WITHOUT reminding me that I have a six-month old son who might go hungry if Pittsburgh chokes before the Final Four again.

Please. Just get that baby out of my face. Unless he’s good luck.You think he’s good luck? Maybe I should let him pick a bracket! You never know!

I bet even a baby could dominate the women’s brackets. It’s nothing but 40-point blowouts anyway.