NFL among leagues trying to block legalized sports betting in New Jersey

The NFL is the most popular sporting league in American history, and you'd be a fool to think that isn't due in part to gambling. Untold millions (billions?) are wagered on bets, fantasy leagues, office pools, survivor pools, or whatever else people figure out to wager on when it comes to football.

The NFL is continuing to play us for those fools by once again taking a public stand against legalized sports betting, according to Reuters.

The NFL, along with the NBA, Major League Baseball and the NCAA, called for an injunction, hoping to block a law that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie signed which would make sports gambling legal in that state. The lawsuit said the new gambling law is in violation of the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, a 1992 federal ban on state-sponsored sports betting, according to Reuters.

Irreparable harm? Puh-lease. 

The NFL, which has fought gambling publicly for many years, is all in favor of fantasy football though because commissioner Roger Goodell thinks that's a bonding experience. There's an incredible disconnect between that view, and thinking that your three-team parlay on an NFL Sunday is going to cause the league that makes billions of dollars every year "irreparable harm." There's also a disconnect between that stance and the NFL putting out an injury report, which helps gamblers more than anyone.

Any notion that the NFL could somehow be tainted by legal gambling is absurd. The minimum salary for an NFL player is $420,000. No player is risking it all for a fraction of that salary to change the outcome of a game. Also, any potential fix is much more likely to get flagged by a legal sports book than any of the various illegal outlets that take bets on sports. One of the reasons the Arizona State basketball point shaving scandal in the 1993-94 season was uncovered was that casinos in Las Vegas reported unusual betting patterns on the games.

Yet, the NFL still fights gambling. At best that battle is just nonsensical and outdated. At worst it's terribly hypocritical and intellectually dishonest. Either way, it's hard to figure out.

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Frank Schwab is the editor of Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at shutdowncorner@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @YahooSchwab