When the Supreme Court cleared the way in which for legalized sports activities playing in 2018, the N.F.L. rushed to embrace a profitable line of enterprise it had denounced for many years as dangerous for the game. There was, in spite of everything, new cash to be made. The penalties of that about-face at the moment are coming due.

The league on Friday handed down some of the strictest penalties it has ever issued, banning three gamers for at the least the 2023 season for betting on N.F.L. video games and suspending two others for six video games for different violations of the league’s betting coverage. The scale of the newest scandal and the terse verdict from the league rekindle questions concerning the precarious line the N.F.L. is making an attempt to stroll on playing.

The indefinite suspension of three gamers — receiver Quintez Cephus and security C.J. Moore of the Detroit Lions and defensive finish Shaka Toney of the Washington Commanders — implies that 5 gamers up to now 4 years have obtained at the least season-long bans for betting on N.F.L. video games, after a long time with none such punishments. This week’s investigation ended with two extra Lions gamers, receivers Stanley Berryhill and Jameson Williams, suspended for six video games for lesser playing violations that didn’t embody betting on N.F.L. video games.

This form of scandal might have been what the N.F.L. was guarding towards in the course of the 25 years it spent inveighing towards legalized sports activities betting. “We should not gamble with our children’s heroes,” Paul Tagliabue, then the league’s commissioner, testified to Congress in 1991 in help of laws that successfully banned sports activities betting nationwide. In 2012, it was Roger Goodell’s flip to take up the trigger.

“The N.F.L. cannot be compensated in damages for the harm that sports gambling poses to the goodwill, character and integrity of N.F.L. football,” Goodell wrote in a declaration for a courtroom case about sports activities betting.

Yet in 2018, when the Supreme Court overturned the regulation that Tagliabue had championed, paving the way in which for states to legalize sports activities betting, the N.F.L. shortly reversed course and sought to revenue. Once a critic of the whole lot Las Vegas stood for, the league in brief order permitted the Raiders to construct a stadium simply off the Strip with a view of Luxor’s pyramid, held the Pro Bowl and the draft within the metropolis, and can conclude the 2023 season with a Super Bowl there.

In the method, the league swung the door open to the very hurt its leaders spent 1 / 4 century warning towards.

“Now, the young athletes are coming up in professional sports leagues with mixed messaging, not just from society and gambling companies, but from the sports leagues themselves,” stated Marc Edelman, a regulation professor and director of sports activities ethics at Baruch College. As lengthy because the N.F.L. has partnerships with betting corporations, advertises betting throughout its video games and encourages betting to the purpose of getting sportsbooks on-site at N.F.L. stadiums, there will likely be “a level of cognitive dissonance for some players,” who might not absolutely notice the ramifications in the event that they do wager on sports activities, Edelman added.

The N.F.L., which says it educates all personnel yearly about its playing insurance policies, has justified its stringent penalties as being mandatory to guard the “integrity of the game.” Yet the N.F.L. didn’t disclose sufficient details about the violations for the general public to know whether or not the gamers wager on their groups’ video games, or wager in coordination with each other, or how they have been caught. There’s been no readability from the league on whether or not, or how, the integrity of that recreation or others have been in danger.

The seriousness of the self-discipline, on par with that levied towards gamers who’ve beforehand wager on their very own groups, appeared aimed toward deterring others. But the league’s rationalization of its penalties fell in need of one other function: making certain public belief.

In a 181-word assertion, issued on the cusp of the weekend, the league requested followers to take at face worth its single-sentence assertion that “a league review uncovered no evidence indicating any inside information was used or that any game was compromised in any way.”

But the league has a observe document of not being forthcoming about damaging data. The N.F.L. destroyed the videotapes and different proof it collected as a part of the 2007 Spygate investigation, which confirmed that the New England Patriots had filmed their opponents’ sideline to steal alerts. And it refused to compel and release a written report detailing the findings of the league-sponsored investigation into accusations of office abuse and harassment underneath Daniel Snyder’s management of the Commanders.

Though sports activities betting has been extensively authorized within the United States for only some years, right now’s gamers have successfully been raised on playing as leisure. Sports betting apps borrow from the micro-transactions and loot bins which might be widespread in video video games, and plenty of are created by the identical corporations that when saturated the N.F.L.’s airwaves with commercials for day by day fantasy sports activities.

“The ease with which people can bet on sports on their phone is a boon to the sports gambling industry, because it puts a casino at the tip of everybody’s hand,” Edelman stated. “But it is much easier for somebody to make an instantaneous decision to place a single bet of a small amount without thinking twice about it, and only realizing afterward that’s a violation.”

Many sports activities betting consultants argue that catching gamers betting is proof the system is working. With sports activities leagues, betting information corporations and regulation enforcement aligned, their monitoring, they are saying, is simpler at rooting out illicit exercise now that betting is authorized.

The partnerships the N.F.L. has cast with sports activities betting corporations are estimated to be value a whole bunch of hundreds of thousands yearly. Instead of the “damages” Goodell warned of in 2012, the N.F.L. has reaped spoils, together with large sponsorship offers with casinos — whereas a handful of gamers have paid a steep value because the league heralds its integrity.

Arizona Cardinals defensive again Josh Shaw, who was suspended in 2019 for more than a season for betting on N.F.L. video games, has by no means performed within the N.F.L. once more. Former Atlanta Falcons receiver Calvin Ridley, a former first-round decide, was traded to the Jacksonville Jaguars throughout his season-long suspension and was reinstated in March. The Lions promptly lower Cephus and Moore on Friday.

Bob Boland, a sports activities regulation professor at Seton Hall who teaches topics that embody gaming regulation, described the inflow of recent playing cash to the N.F.L. as having a “steroidal effect” that hastened the league’s abandonment of its view of playing as an existential menace.

“That probably will dissipate with time,” Boland stated. “But it’s certainly sent a message that we’re no longer treating this with the amount of fear and trepidation that we used to, so maybe you shouldn’t worry about it, either.”

Finding a palatable option to embrace one thing lengthy considered as a vice, Boland added, “is a difficult challenge,” notably when the change occurred so shortly.

Goodell was proper in 2012 that there could be a price to legalizing sports activities betting. But the N.F.L. continues to hope it received’t be the one to pay it.