Brackets are everywhere

MIAMI — There is a bracket where even Gator haters not only can pick Florida, but probably will.

Florida Evans, that is. Yes, the mom from “Good Times” is in the running for a title right now.

You think brackets are just for basketball and that they only get filled out at this time of year, in the days leading up to the start of the NCAA Tournament?

These days, there are brackets for just about everything — best presidents, best movies, best Aerosmith songs, and so much more.

“Brackets, they’re just inherently fun,” said Joe Micik, who owns a site called Bracketyard.com . “When it comes to March Madness, I feel like doing your bracket is just part of the cultural experience of America.”

Micik’s site has brackets with topics ranging from RuPaul to Hell’s Kitchen to Mystery Science Theater 3000. And that’s just a tiny percentage of what’s out there to choose from.

There’s a “Hottest Kennedys” bracket, where John F. Kennedy and John F. Kennedy Jr. may actually meet in the Elite Eight. There’s a “Teen Movies” bracket — and whoever put it together should be embarrassed that “Varsity Blues” was a 16 seed. There’s a best candy bracket, where candy corn probably gave peanut M&Ms a serious run in a potential 12-5 upset.

Entertainment Weekly put together a “Best Actress” bracket earlier this year that was absolutely diabolical in some of its first-round matchups: Meryl Streep vs. Sally Field, Joan Crawford vs. Bette Davis, Helen Mirren vs. Charlize Theron — and that was just to get into the Round of 32. (Vivien Leigh wound up winning for her work in “Gone With The Wind.”)

You get the idea. “People really like taking sides,” said Mike Roe, a digital journalist at KPCC radio in Southern California — which has done some extremely popular bracket contests. “People like finding something they can get behind, something they identify with.”