After nearly 70 years, I’ve decided what I want to do when I grow up. Actually, it’s down to two: Become a bracketologist or an NFL mock-draft expert. 

Both rely on what I know I can do and do well: produce a pile of fleeting, irrelevant, time-tested nonsense. 

As for bracketology, I’m still, you should excuse the expressions, on the bubble to punch my ticket to the Big Dance. But even if I don’t know a mid-major from a drum major, I know I can fake it and no one will remember — if they cared to know in the first place. 

Mock-draft expertise takes more cunning. After all, such speculative judgments should have been eliminated when Tom Brady was chosen 199th in the 2000 draft. 

That Brady made a mockery of mock drafts hasn’t stopped designated experts from compiling data on the draft eligible that includes 40-yard dash times, vertical jumps, anvil-juggling and, as NBC’s Cris Collinsworth says, those who are “superb catchers of the football” to reach firm, forgettable conclusions. 

Consider NBC’s website assessments of the Raiders’ first two picks in the 2020 draft, both with now ex-Raiders’ GM Mike Mayock/and self-anointed NFL know-it-all Jon Gruden at the wheel. 

1) WR Henry Ruggs III, 12th-overall pick, University of Alabama. Grade A: 

“Ruggs, who ran a 4.27 40-yard dash at the NFL Scouting Combine, has the type of freakish athleticism and home-run ability the Silver and Black sorely have been missing.” 

2) CB Damon Arnette, 19th-overall pick, Ohio State: Grade: B. 

“Most expected the Raiders to try to trade down from the 19th spot, in an effort to pick up a second-round pick. Instead, they filled their second-biggest need with Arnette.” 

Ruggs, Grade A, is currently awaiting trial, charged with vehicular homicide in the death of 23-year-old Tina Tintor. According to the charges, he was driving 165 mph on a Las Vegas street at 3:40 a.m. He was additionally charged with DUI and for carrying a gun. 

He’d signed for $16 million over four seasons. 

Arnette, Grade B, was released by the Raiders after he was seen in a video appearing to brandish guns while issuing threats and chanting “n—a.” 

He’d previously been accused in two lawsuits of injuring a woman in a hit-and-run — she has filed suit against him — and pointing a gun at a lot attendant after Arnette refused to produce the receipt for his car. 

He’d signed a four-year deal with the Raiders for $13.4 million, with a signing bonus of $7.3 million. 

No problem. Arnette was signed to the Dolphins’ practice squad — perhaps passing head coach/social activist Brian Flores’ stink test — then by the Chiefs, who soon released him after he was arrested for assault with a deadly weapon. Arnette has denied pointing a gun at anyone. 

Back to Ruggs. After his arrest for a hideously reckless felony DUI, he was defended by Giants’ WR Kadarius Toney, University of Florida man, who tweeted: 

“We young…..everybody make mistakes….y’all lookin at the situation like ‘this or that’ kuz it ain’t y’all…having so much too say….he know he messed up don’t drag em for it……that’s goofy to me….just pray for the families involved.” 

Toney, injured much of this season, was rated a first-rounder in last year’s mock drafts, and the Giants made it happen. I wish both well. 

See? That’s all it takes. If the mock draft expert is dead wrong, who will remember? Then he or she can always blame the GM for wasting another pick while demanding his expulsion. It’s easy. It’s not rocket surgery. Or bracketology. 

The truth about Phil Mickelson as a current-events topic has always been there for the golf media — especially TV’s unconditional back-slappers — to be told. 

Years ago, Mickelson, through all this smiles and tips of his endorsement caps, was widely known as a shady character with a shady character. His excessive gambling, on and off the course, made for dark off-the-air conversation, eye-raising and suspicion. 

One would think he’d made enough money — as in 100s of millions — to have avoided an inside-trading schemer, a Vegas gambler named Billy Walters, who was sentenced to five years in prison. In 2016 Mickelson escaped with a $1 million fine, and was never charged with wrongdoing. Mickelson reportedly owed Walters $2 million, according to court docs. 

And now that Mickelson has lost his facade as a fans’ man and his multimillion dollar deal to wear the cap of the investment company KPMG over his money-over-morality position on taking millions more to play on a Saudi-backed tour, why didn’t KPMG, operating on the public’s financial trust, act after his insider trading settlement? 

There is no one who believes Mickelson’s last-ditch and suspiciously desperate claim to have been betrayed by the author of the story, in which Mickelson indicated he’d exploit the Saudis’ money, murder warts and all, as leverage over the bleepity-bleep greedmongers running the PGA Tour. Even if the weekly PGA Tour third-place finisher is paid nearly $1 million. 

I’ve never known an habitual big-stakes gambler to be “set for life.” Mickelson’s gives me the creeps — and alway has. 

But this is the bag we’re in. All American sports are now so inextricably tethered to money culled from despotic autocracies — hello Red China, aka The People’s Republic of Nike! — and now league, team and PGA-certified sports gambling predicated on fans losing their dough only makes Mickelson a big-name target. 

Meanwhile, we’re running out of those in a position to pass judgment. 

Reader Don Reed notes that it took jockey Florent Geroux and his mount, Mandoulin, nine months to be declared the winners of last year’s Kentucky Derby following the drug DQ of since-deceased Medina Spirit. 

In July, Geroux and Mandoulin were declared the winners of Monmouth’s Haskell Stakes — after a DQ. We’d rename Mandoulin “Eventually.” 

Credit Juwan Howard for not playing the “That’s not who I am” card. Perhaps because that’s who he is. The cure? Surrender! Eliminate the handshake line, ban all acts of sportsmanship — sportsmanship causes fights! 

Not sure MLB and the MLBPA have taken the time to notice, but fewer and fewer lifelong baseball fans — and they’re trending older and beyond — care how you whack up your take. Keep it up, you’ll be fighting over a carcass. 

Reader Armand Rose: The NBA All-Star Game has become “a high-priced shoot-around,” a colossal waste of time better spent avoiding watching something more intriguing, like Ch. 11’s Yule Log. 

Don’t bet against one-eyed jacks. Dick Vitale receiving hopeful reports from docs as he undergoes chemo. Tough Joisy boid can take a punch. 

Of all the people to ridicule folks suffering from disabilities, WFAN’s “Weekday Boomer” Esiason on Thursday mocked ex-Knicks’ GM Donnie Walsh, now 80, for having been relegated to a wheelchair following spinal surgery. Nothing funnier than a man in a wheelchair. 

Attention PETA: FS1 continues to rely on cheap chimpanzee labor. Graphic this week read, “Purdue: First win vs. Rutgers since Jan. 15, 2019.” 

When I’m done complaining for a living, I’m turning this column over to Marcus Stroman.