Las Vegas isn’t going to run out of money anytime soon.

From the time of the first organized sports leagues in America, gambling has hovered around the fringes of the game. I suspect when the first Major League Baseball game was played way back in 1871, there were probably a couple of farmers sitting in a nearby field wagering their crop money over who would win, the Fort Wayne Kekiongas or the Cleveland Forest Cities.

Here in 2024, the lines are far less blurred. Over the past five years, sports gambling has exploded to unfathomable new levels and has infiltrated the games to the point where the boundaries have been completely removed. In 2018, the US Supreme Court eliminated the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA), kicking open the door to individual states to institute and enforce their own sports betting laws. As of this writing, 30 states now offer legal online sports gambling, while eight others allow in-person betting. (Texas is not among those 38 states.)

But it’s not just sports fans who are embracing betting, it’s the leagues themselves. For decades, Las Vegas was viewed as no-man’s land by pro leagues, who wanted nothing to do with the image that holding an event in the capital of sports wagering might present.

Those days feel like ancient history now. Today, Las Vegas is home to an NFL team, an NHL team and a WNBA team, and could end up as the home of the MLB’s Oakland Athletics before long. The NBA holds its Summer League in Vegas. Formula 1 staged a race there for the first time last year, and in February the NFL will invade Vegas when it hosts Super Bowl LVIII at Allegiant Stadium, the first time a Super Bowl will be held in the state of Nevada.

So, that’s the exposition. Sports gambling is huge. But you didn’t need me to tell you that. Here’s my point: By kicking down the barriers that used to stand between a fan and a bet, our country has made itself vulnerable to a potential gambling epidemic. Do we really expect college students who can now make legal bets on sporting events via their smart phones to always approach this freedom with responsibility?

Honestly, I fear an epidemic of future gambling addicts is on the horizon.

Here’s where I stand on sports gambling: It’s not really my bag, but I’m fine if it’s yours. To me, it feels like a good way to lose money. Knowing what I do about sports and sometimes predicting the outcomes of games as a byproduct of my job, I’ve long been fully aware of the truth that sports is, by nature, an unpredictable business.

There really are no sure things. It’s called a gamble for a reason.

Nearly 21 years ago, I shared a similar sentiment in a Trib column, writing, “Frankly, it’d be easier if you simply ran your Benjamin Franklins through a paper shredder.”

I’ll never forget one voicemail I received from a female reader in response to that piece. She said, “Some gamblers do have a life, Cher-eee!” In the background, you could hear a baby or a small child crying. I remember playing that recording for my colleagues in the sports department and sharing a hearty chuckle about it, with someone taking on the role of the crying child and saying, “Don’t gamble away my milk money, Mom!” But even at the time, it felt as sad as it did humorous.

But, again, you do you. This is not a diatribe against the “evils” of gambling, but rather a cautionary tale about how too much freedom can be a dangerous thing. Rules and regulations sometimes help protect us from ourselves.

Besides, I’m not holier than thou. I’ve got enough vices of my own, and it’s not as if I’ve never made a bet on a sporting event. It’s generally been a piddly, friendly wager with a friend or co-worker, or maybe putting $10 into a March Madness pot. And I suspect if I ever visit Las Vegas, besides checking in with my friend and Trib sports editor predecessor Jim Barnes, who is now the sports editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, I’d probably drop by one of the sports books along the strip and maybe drop a few bucks on a game, just to see what all the fuss is about. But, certainly, no more than I could afford to lose.

And that’s kind of the point. If we could ensure that sports fans would approach this newfound outbreak of legal gambling with responsibility, if we could trust they’d make their wagers in moderation, then it would be no big deal. But that’s about as firm a guarantee as picking the Jets to win the Super Bowl. Good luck with that.

It seems that every one of these ads promoting legal sports gambling, including those from the likes of DraftKings or FanDuel, also offer a fine-print disclaimer at the bottom of the screen. “Have a gambling problem? Call this number …”

It makes you wonder if there’s someone on the other end of the line ready to take another bet. It pays to feed the beast, after all.

Look, anything can be addictive, including activities that are relatively harmless. TV can be addictive, video games can be addictive. (Plenty of modern teenagers struggle with the latter.) Other things, like alcohol or pornography, tend to be more dangerous when they’re consumed in excess. Gambling falls in the same boat. A gambling addict will wager money he or she can’t afford to lose on outcomes that have zero guarantee of success. Such behavior destroys lives and families, and isn’t exactly beneficial to the economy as a whole.

When we as a country legalize substances or behaviors that formerly were restricted by laws and boundaries, we’re opening a Pandora’s Box. By creating an easier path to wagering on sports, we’re likely cursing a large percentage of the next generation of adults to a lifetime of addiction and financial strife.

That’s not even taking into account the potential for fixing games and manipulated outcomes that could arise from this outbreak of blurred lines. That’s a whole other argument against legalized gambling in itself.

In 2023, the NFL suspended four players for violations of its gambling policy, increasing the number to 10 of players who had been suspended for such missteps over the past two years. Expect that number to grow rather than decrease, even as the NFL has called for better training and education for its players about the perils of gambling.

By the end of the 2020s, it would not be shocking to see all 50 states offering legal sports gambling. Big deal, some might say, that’s the way it should be. But I’m betting it’s going to create as many problems as it does profits.

All we’re doing is gambling away our country’s future.