by Jeanne Gokcen
In the spirit of reminiscing about all things Conversant and given that ‘tis the season for the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, Sedat and I wanted to share our memories of the annual Bracketball Tournament that was organized forever by Mark Fohl (aka “Saint”), in which many of us participated and thoroughly enjoyed.
We’re not sure what year Mark started organizing his Bracketball Tournament, but Sedat started participating immediately. I was not into basketball nor even familiar with the tournament at the time. After a couple of years, I complained to Sedat about “losing” him to basketball every year for a month. He tried to convince me how fun this event was and encouraged me to join in. Despite my protests that I knew nothing about basketball, much less the teams, I reluctantly filled out a bracket, using the team descriptions and analyses published in USA Today and the Columbus Dispatch.
Does everyone who participated remember gathering at Damon’s in the Hunter’s Ridge shopping center to watch the games? Talk about fun! Damon’s was one of the first places that really had the concept of a sports bar and had multiple screens showing all of the games simultaneously. And the onion loaf (I miss the onion loaf)! Some people would go there on the first Thursday and Friday of the tournament as early as they could manage and would snag a couple of large tables. Then the rest of us would straggle in as soon as we could. What a riot! The camaraderie that developed as we all collectively experienced those dramatic highs and lows as our teams lived or died was amazing! Woo! What a ride!
The Damon’s experience alone was enough to make me love the tournament, but what took me over the top was that, against all expectations, I won Mark’s Bracketball Tournament my first year! To say I was hooked after that is an understatement. And then to cement that obsession, I won the next 2 years in a row, as well! Hilariously, I started having people come up to me in the halls and asking me what I thought of different teams and what my picks were gonna be!
After my 3rd win, Mark approached me and told me a closely-held secret: Whoever runs a Bracketball Tournament NEVER wins – and he was living proof of that! He hinted, maybe even halfway seriously, that perhaps I should take over his tournament.
My consultant work with Conversant was completed in 1997, and Sedat joined me in my company, FutureCom Technologies, in 1998. When March Madness rolled around in 1999, we were at a loss because we didn’t have a Bracketball group to participate in any more. Something had to be done.
Well, those of you who know Sedat and his initiative will not be surprised to learn that he created our online Gokcen Bracketball Tournament that year in which people from anywhere can participate, easily entering their teams, keeping up with the results, and being able to banter back and forth throughout the tournament. I contributed by writing blog posts and also, and most critically, presenting a “Bracketball song of the year,” taking a perfectly lovely song and butchering the lyrics to pay homage to Bracketball!
We are now in our 26th year of presenting the Gokcen Bracketball Tournament, all of which is due to Mark Fohl’s Bracketball legacy. And true to what Mark warned me about the curse, as the organizer of the Gokcen Bracketball Tournament, I have never won the tournament again. Sigh. We’ve enjoyed many years of participation from some Conversant friends, like Wally Wolfe (and his family).
In early March 2025, Jeanne Gokcen shared this story. Jeanne’s husband Sedat was a key member of the original Conversant speech & signal processing group responsible for a number of key things including the Text to Speech (TTS) capability on Conversant:
Jeanne the hoops queen!!! Yes, I remember! Not once, not twice, but three times! One or two guys actually stopped playing because of you! Losers!!! And don’t forget, we were voice enabled one year!Thanks Jeanne! Hope to see you and Sedat in June!
Kudos also to Bill Lenzotti who ran it for a couple years ….
Reply by Mark Fohl
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