CAT-astrophe! #14 Oakland shocks #3 Kentucky!

In an a bit of a stunner, #14 Oakland knocked off #3 Kentucky 80-76 last night, as the Wildcats continued their seemingly annual tradition of early NCAA exits. Oakland was paced by viral breakout star Jack Gohlke’s 32 points, including an incredible *10* 3-pointers.

Hardest hurt by Kentucky’s loss no doubt were the 36 GAMM participants who picked them to win it all on their brackets. To a lesser extent, it also hurt for your beloved Commish, who had them going to the Elite Eight.

Oakland’s win sets up a match-up vs #11 NC State, as the Wolfpack, building off their surprising ACC Tournament Championship last week, continued their hot hand by knocking off #6 Texas Tech 80-67.

Despite a decent number of upsets, a peak at the standings shows 7 participants going an impressive 15 for 16 yesterday, including my first ever boss at Great American, Ron Gifford, and Assistant Commish Lauren Dennehy‘s boyfriend, Zach Giesting. However, lurking just behind them in a multi-way tie for 8th place with 14 points is none other than Mrs. Commish:

As nobody had a perfect bracket yesterday, Andy Marquart and Marc Pine’s record for most 1st round points in GAMM history of 31, set in G.A.M.M. VIII, cannot be broken. However, if any of the 7 individuals tied for 1st can run the table today, they would be able to tie them though. As I mentioned yesterday, this year I bumped the prize for most 1st round points to $100. In the event of a tie, the tiebreaker will be whoever called the biggest upset.

As many of you already know, in these past 31 years I’ve been running this pool, my career winnings have amounted to a a stunning $0.00. As always, I’m forced to point out that I am also the *ONLY* member of my family to have never won any money in this thing. That’s right, they’ve all won money at some point:

Greetings from Interstate 80!

Welcome to Great American March Madness XXXI, everyone! And, yes, you read that headline right … as we go to press, the Commish is driving across Route 80 in Pennsylvania on my way to beautiful New Jersey on this, the opening day of March Madness (aka the busiest day of my entire year).

You see, my beloved niece, Nora, is getting married on Saturday and as there are wedding-related activities taking place on Friday that we want to be there for, we’re traveling today. And so Mrs. Commish and I, along with the youngest of our 3 former tax deductions, Matthew, have fired up the G.A.M.M. Mobile Command Center (pictured below) and we are currently eastbound and down.

The G.A.M.M. Mobile Command Center. Give us a honk if you see us!

The Commish, ever magnanimous of course, thought nothing of missing most of today’s games. Or trying to manage an increasingly unmanageable basketball pool where people routinely hit me up with 11th-hour problems about accessing their brackets or not receiving their invites. Or having to keep track of hundreds of Venmo payments. Or cranking out blog content for all 2 of my fans.

Nope, didn’t even think twice about it.

Like I told everyone who asked … this is family, and, after all, I *AM* Nora’s favorite uncle.

(I’m also her ONLY uncle too, but that’s beside the point)

Many people are rightly pointing out though that if I really were her favorite uncle, she wouldn’t have scheduled her wedding to coincide with the start of March Madness.

Good question, Don Vito!

But, whatever though. What’s done is done. Or, as they say in the Garden State, “fuhgeddaboudit.” My wedding gift to you, Nora, is this: “forgiveness.” So, there ya go. You’re welcome.

(Poor Mrs. Commish, btw. She’s got to listen to me whine about all of this for the whole 600+ miles.)

So, as you may have noticed from the GAMM Mobile Command Center pic, I’ve been fooling around a bit with AI image generators to prepare for this year’s pool. I’m hoping it will help save me some time so I’m not fumbling my way through the usual crappy photoshops I tend to crank out. I experimented with a few image generators before finally finding one I liked. This morning I described my current situation and asked it to create an image of me trying to manage this pool while in the GAMM Mobile Command Center and here’s what it came up with: