We have a national champion . . . of lousy “collusion” punditry.

It was a tough bracket, featuring some of the biggest names in the prestige press, late-night comedians, ­C- and D-list celebs, scholars, think-tankers and freshly minted Russia experts. But top-seeded Rachel Maddow dribbled and scored her way past them all to clinch The Post’s #MuellerMadness trophy.

Congratulations to Maddow and her MSNBC colleagues!

More than 1,000 readers shared their brackets with us, and a large plurality (nearly a quarter) picked Maddow for the top spot. As reader Jim Murphy said, Maddow “ripped through the field like the Isiah Thomas Indiana team did back in 1981,” fueled by the conviction that it was “her job to educate ‘We the Stupid’ on every rumor and how they all fit together.”

Maddow excelled at connecting nonconnected dots. Night ­after night for two years, she spun tinfoil-hat theories about how “Donald Trump is going to do what Russia wants,” how “the presidency is effectively a ­Russian op.” This, even as the Trump administration armed ­Poland and Ukraine, bombed Russian operatives in Syria and squeezed Moscow’s chief Mideast client, Iran.

In a six-week period in the spring of 2017, the MSNBC star devoted more than half of her segments to Russia, according to an estimate by The Intercept. “Every day, I lead my show and think I’m going to be talking about something else,” she admitted at one point. “But every day, over the course of the news cycle, a new piece of [the collusion story] falls into place.”

But in the end, the pieces didn’t fall into place. And once special counsel Robert Mueller’s report put the lie to the collusion theory, she suffered an instant and precipitous ratings decline.

Then there is our runner-up, Stephen Colbert, who on his show Tuesday night bragged about his third-seed spot in our bracket and vowed he’s “in it to win it!”

Bravo, Stephen: You almost made it to the top — with your hyperpoliticized, hectoring brand of lefty comedy. “He isn’t funny,” wrote a reader from Jersey. “He has between one to five guests nightly to bash Trump, and he can’t even have a guest to promote a movie without telling them that Trump sucks.”

(Kudos to Colbert, by the way, for taking our jabs in good humor. On his Tuesday show, he said of one of his collusion lines: “Up until 48 hours ago, that was a pretty solid joke.”)

Last but not least, there’s our dishonorable-mention spot, which goes to John Brennan. The former CIA director started the championship at a sixth seed, but his treason allegations against the president and bogus claims about imminent indictments received some of the most vehement comments from our readers. Brennan used the “authority and gravitas” that came with his former job to “spread false information,” said Tim Smith.

“He did more damage to American institutions than anyone else in this saga,” said Chloe Davis. “As a former CIA director, he should have had a commitment to truth above all.”

A man who once held a top-secret intelligence clearance, wrote reader Mitch Whitenack, turned out to be “not so intelligent, just another uninformed talking head.”

As for the rest of the field, not to worry: There’s plenty of time to be even more wrong between now and the 2020 election.

Sohrab Ahmari is The Post’s op-ed editor.

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