Americans root, root, rooting for the home team on TV and radio are bombarded with endless pitches to gamble, as everyone from leagues to governments get rich by playing the role of bookies and fans pay the consequences.

“It’s this ticking time bomb,” the executive director of the National Council on Problem Gambling, Keith Whyte, tells NBC News, one estimated to impact about one percent of Americans, but with a single addict able to ruin an entire family.

The group warns that between 60 percent and 80 percent of high school students say they’ve “gambled for money in the past year. [T]he pandemic and easy access to online gambling have heightened risks … and 4 percent to 6 percent of high schoolers are considered addicted.”

Betting stopped being a criminal enterprise after the governor of New Jersey, Democrat Philip Murphy, won in 2018 a Supreme Court case against the NCAA, striking down a law enacted in 1992. Now, millionaire players — even legends like hockey’s Wayne Gretzky, idolized by generations as “the Great One” — pitch apps and websites, many of which are prepared to give away the opening bets for free.

Sports betting is a $67 billion industry, according to Visual Capitalist, and Grand View Research Inc. projects it to reach $140.26 billion by 2028, which is why logos for services like DraftKings and FanDuel are plastered all over arenas, and announcers intrude on the action with an endless menu of wagers on every facet of play.

Since states get a piece of the action, the government — like the house at a casino — always wins, but citizens are not so fortunate. “The No. 2 addiction in North America today … is online gambling,” says radio host and personal finance author Dave Ramsey. “It starts with sports betting as a gateway drug.”

Responding to a New York Times report that “to reap millions of dollars in fees, universities are partnering with betting companies to introduce their students and sports fans to online gambling,” Ramsey said, “You freakin’ idiots… Selling out your own students who you’re supposed to be caring for.”

The National Council on Problem Gambling estimates three-quarters of college students gambled in the past year, and 6 percent have a gambling problem. Don’t worry, though. Each commercial ends with a mumbled number for a gambling hotline, similar to those in tiny type at the bottom of flashy print ads.

“We don’t know what it’s doing to a new generation under the age of 21,” the co-director of the UCLA Gambling Studies Program, Timothy Fong, tells the Washington Post, adding, “The earlier you start gambling — and gambling regularly — that’s the biggest risk factor for addiction.”

A century ago, encouraging wagering on sports would have been unthinkable in the aftermath of the so-called Black Sox scandal in which Chicago’s White Sox were accused of throwing the championship. It’s a topic I discussed with David Pietrusza in our interview about his book, “Rothstein: The Life, Times, and Murder of the Criminal Genius Who Fixed the 1919 World Series.” 

Mr. Pietrusza also wrote the biography “Judge and Jury,” about Kennesaw Mountain Landis, who cleaned up baseball. At the time of our conversation in 2019, Mr. Pietrusza said of the betting boom, “You’ve got a very, very un-Kennesaw Mountain Landis connection between gambling and baseball directly right now, and we’ll see how all that plays out.”

What we’ve seen across sports doesn’t look good, and Mr. Pietrusza told me for this column, “A lot of people besides Landis would be turning over in their graves.” Yet with so many powerful entities getting rich, no one cares much about the fans, or worries about the dangers of a gambler losing big and taking it out on a player or referee.

One hundred years ago, eight greedy, selfish baseball players destroyed America’s faith in sports. Now, legions in government, at networks, in pro leagues, and on teams are following their game plan — and with no Judge Mountain Landis to bat cleanup, they’ll go right on fleecing people in the stands, and ruin more than just the game.