Column: Three stories for a boring April

In the sports world, April is a pretty great month. You’ve got the NCAA basketball Final Four, MLB Opening Day, the start of the NBA and NHL playoffs, and even the Boston Marathon (for the six people outside of Boston who actually care).

Yet somehow, it still seems like the last couple weeks have been lagging a bit. That’s because the sports world is suffering from an unusual problem: all steak and no sizzle. With all the substantial on-field action occurring in the last few weeks, the public just hasn’t had time to digest the various scandals that have been failing to blow our collective mind.

I’m here to fix that by counting down the top six sports scandals, feuds and transgressions that you should all be aware of, because God knows you wouldn’t want to get too caught up in all that on-field mumbo jumbo. Talk about boring. Anyway, you can thank me later.

6. Phil Jackson vs. Kevin Durant

Jeez, Phil sure does love his mind games, doesn’t he? It seems like every spring, right around playoff time, he’s calling out officials, taking subtle jabs at opposing players and generally claiming that the NBA favors whoever the Lakers’ first-round opponents happen to be.

Jackson’s latest victim is Kevin Durant. The Lakers began their series against Durant and the Oklahoma City Thunder on Sunday, just days after a Jackson classic: “[Durant] really gets to the line a lot ... There’s a couple plays in the last game where I was pretty curious as to how he got there.”

Naturally, Durant didn’t appreciate Jackson’s take — rather unsurprising given the fact that the third-year forward out of Texas led the NBA in scoring this season with 30.1 points per game — and fired back at the Lakers coach.

“That’s a part of my game, getting to the free-throw line and being aggressive,” Durant said. “If you say that I get superstar calls or I get babied by the refs, that’s just taking away from how I play. That’s disrespectful to me.”

And there you have it, a nice insta-feud just in time for the playoffs. Even if you disagree with his tactics, you’ve got to hand it to Jackson — he sure knows how to add a little intrigue to a playoff series.

Oh, and thus far it seems to be working rather well. Durant shot just seven-for-24 from the field in game one on Sunday.

5. Tiger Woods Doesn’t Quit

Tiger’s sex scandal really is the gift that just keeps on giving (insert sex joke here). Thoughthe story broke the day after Thanksgiving (that’s nearly six months ago, for those of you keeping score at home), it still seems to pop up on the front page of Deadspin.com or ESPN.com at least once a week.

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I like to think that there’s someone pulling the strings behind the curtain who has a giant Wheel of Fortune board. Every week he gives it a spin. Sometimes it’s a new mistress — porn star, Chili’s waitress, next-door neighbor, etc. — or if we’re really lucky, a treasure trove of sexually charged text messages.

Tiger is really the model athlete of the 21st century. He gives the public both the sizzle and the steak. He can bring it both on the course (14 major championships) and off (more than a dozen mistresses, according to most published accounts). Plus, he can make really creepy commercials with his deceased father doing the voiceover as Tiger stares into the camera. Tiger Woods, total package.

And here’s the great thing: There’s so much potential material left out there.

I have June 13 (the Sunday before the start of the U.S. Open) marked down for the unveiling of the sex tape in my office pool. Plan your schedules accordingly.

4. Jerry Jones, Still Crazy

And drunk, I suppose. In fact, go search “Jerry Jones drunk” on YouTube and you’ll see what I’m talking about. Essentially, the Dallas Cowboys’ owner went out one night, had himself a few drinks and then started bad-mouthing Florida messiah Tim Tebow and his team’s former coach, Bill Parcells. Someone videotaped it. And put it on the Internet. Whoops.

At this point, Jones is a little bit like your grandfather who’s so ensconced in old age that he’ll pretty much say anything that pops into his head. The problem for Double-J is that instead of rambling to Abe and Herman while playing shuffleboard like your grandfather might, he inadvertently opened his mind up to anyone with a computer.

Now all that’s left for us to do is see whether Al Davis or George Steinbrenner can up the ante. And George hates losing.

Next week, I’ll go over the top three off-field stories that will break the mind-numbing monotony of April baseball, basketball and hockey playoffs, and the arrival of spring.