Timing is all

 Perhaps now is the time for the National Football League to send a decorative fruit basket to Sister Jean. Or to those plucky lads from Oral Roberts. Or to the four Pac-12 teams still thumbing their noses at their allegedly learned detractors ... or to the lonely Michigan Wolverines ... or to ancient Jim Boeheim and his diabolical 2-3 zone.

Let me explain this.

See, the NFL has a great big public relations nightmare blowing up in its face right now, and Sister Jean and the plucky ORU lads and the rest of the NCAA Tournament is providing excellent cover for it. Because without Da Tournament sucking all the oxygen out of the room, how much bigger would this Deshaun Watson business be?

I mean, one of the NFL's biggest stars stands accused of being a serial sexual harasser/molester, and not just any sexual harasser/molester. So far 16 lawsuits have been filed against Watson by women, mostly massage therapists, alleging Watson made unwanted sexual advances to them -- the most recent just this month. And it's mostly flown under the radar because everyone's preoccupied with their Brackets Flambe.

The story wasn't even a blip until the number of Watson's accusers got up in the double digits, and the Blob blames Da Tournament. The American public can't hold more than one big story in its head at a time, and these days it's often either a Stupid Performative Outrage Story or a Totally Made Up Story. And so of course it's going to be a particularly Mad edition of March Madness -- after a year in which there was none -- that has folks preoccupied.

Which should not be, because this Watson thing is huge. 

It's huge, first of all, because not long ago every team in the league with a quarterback deficiency was camping out on Deshaun Watson's front lawn, on the very suggestion he might be unhappy in Houston. This is because Watson is one of the top five quarterbacks in football. It's scary to think how much teams would be willing to defile themselves for him. 

Sorry. Would have been willing to defile themselves.

Now, probably not so much, with the legion of his accusers seemingly growing by the day. Even with Da Tournament still in the midst of a lovely fit of Big Crazy, it's finally become the story it should have been all along. You can't go on a sports website or the Magic Twitter Thingy without seeing the latest developments prominently displayed.

And that, boys and girls, must have the NFL in absolute cringe mode. It's already gotten a reputation as a warehouse for sexual predators and domestic abusers, despite all its earnest PR to the contrary. Now one of its marquee names is being painted as an insatiable horndog? And in the era of #MeToo, when more and more women are saying "Oh, HELL, no" to indignities they've put up with ... well, forever?

What the NFL is going to do about all this remains down the road, the only piece of good news for the Shield at the moment. Right now we're still in the lawyer smear mode phase, accusations being lobbed back and forth like a catapult lobbing boulders at a castle wall.

Watson's people are claiming one of the plaintiffs tried to extort Deshaun after a consensual encounter. The plaintiffs' crew counters that Watson offered hush money to one of his alleged victims and tried to pressure her into signing a non-disclosure agreement, saying repeatedly he could either "help, or hurt, her career."

He said. She said. The age-old tale.

Of course, in other news, Da Tournament starts up again Saturday with Sweet Sixteen games. 

No doubt the NFL can't wait.