Standing in the betting line on Sunday morning, I felt like I was making a huge mistake.

I looked around and saw a bunch of people who looked absolutely ridiculous.

One guy in particular had a Kansas City Chiefs Starter jacket on over his Chiefs hoodie. He was wearing a Chiefs hat and some pants that said “Chiefs” on them about 150 times.

I was really glad that I paid for the NFL Sunday Ticket on DirecTV. That meant I wouldn’t have to watch the NFL Sunday in a place like that.

Never would I want to find myself in the company of a guy who was also most likely wearing Chiefs Underoos, but that is not what was making me feel so uneasy. Instead, I felt like I was starting to slide down the very slippery slope of sports betting.

I was doing something that I swore I would never do. I was throwing bad money after bad money.

For a few years, some friends and I met at this old sports bar for lunch every Friday during the football season. We would look over the point spreads on the sheet of paper handed out by the one-eyed bookie.

We would discuss the spreads and try to snuff out some can’t-miss games as we ate lunch.

The lines used to come out fairly early in the week, and the one-eyed bookie would never adjust them. If a starting quarterback went down with an injury during a practice on Thursday, the line would stay the same.

We thought we could outsmart the one-eyed bookie, but we never did.

Each week, I would write down four teams on the back of a casino ticket. I always bet $10, and if I hit all four games, I would collect $110 early the next week.

That happened exactly one time in four or five seasons of betting every Friday.

The worst thing I did was win a four-team ticket early on. That is the feeling you chase. That is what gets you hooked

It wasn’t that I needed the money. My wife would just take the winnings, anyway. It was the thrill of winning that was addictive.

Hitting a four-team parlay is almost impossible to do. The way Las Vegas sets those numbers, every game is a toss-up.

Hitting a four-team parlay is like flipping a coin four times and having it come up “heads” all four times.

You can do it, but, on average, you give up your $10 to the bookie about 15 times for every one time that he gives you $110.

That is what you call a losing proposition, and I wasn’t even close to average. Like playing the lottery, betting on sports is a tax for people who are bad at math.

If you are only betting $10 a week, then it is OK. That is a fun way to make the games a little more interesting. 

It sure beats acting like a Dungeons and Dragons geek and playing fantasy football.

The one-eyed bookie was one of two bookies I knew of in town. He was a very friendly guy who wasn’t very good at hiding his illegal activity.

During the pull-tab rush before the Super Bowl, he would sell his big-money — and highly illegal — tabs in the bar’s cooler. All an agent of the Gambling Control Division had to do to bust him was stand in the long line that ran into the cooler.

Luckily, they didn’t seem to look too hard.

While the one-eyed bookie took mostly small bets, the other bookie would take big bets over the phone. I knew that was too dangerous to get involved in.

I have seen enough movies to know that I would find myself in the trunk of a Lincoln Continental if I went that route.

That bookie, who I believe got out of the business, is also a nice guy, but he had some collectors who might break your thumbs if they have to.

OK, so I never heard of anyone having their thumbs broken, even though I had some friends who owed him a lot of money. The romantic in me, though, likes to think there were a few.

I was at the sports bar that Sunday morning because my four-team parlay was shot before the early NFL games even kicked off. I picked two can’t-miss college games on Saturday and two can’t-miss NFL games on Sunday.

Once the college games missed, I ran down to pick four more can’t-miss NFL games. This time, I had more than $10 in hand as I chased that winning feeling and tried to make up for my losses.

Even though I always thought I was too smart to fall for such a thing, there I was falling for it.

It was so easy to do, too.

That is why professional sports leagues used to avoid Vegas like we always assumed people would avoid the plague. 

They didn’t want their athletes exposed to easy gambling and be tempted by “Sin City.”

Now we have the Raiders and Golden Knights in Vegas, and almost every other professional stadium has turned into Las Vegas.

There was a time when you couldn’t even say the word “gamble” in stadiums. Now, gambling is all over the place.

Many teams even have sports books inside the stadium. They also advertise for online betting on the signs behind home plate. You can’t listen to a game, a sports radio show or a sports podcast without hearing ads for betting.

Then, the NFL is surprised that it suddenly has a problem with players placing bets? And it apparently did very little to put in safeguards to protect those players.

Recently, Quintez Cephus and C.J. Moore of the Detroit Lions and Shaka Toney of the Washington Commanders were suspended for gambling. That came after former Atlanta Falcons receiver Calvin Ridley, now of the Jacksonville Jaguars, missed a season for gambling.

Isaiah Rodgers of the Indianapolis Colts is now being investigated because he is suspected of gambling on Colts games, and he is looking at a very lengthy suspension. 

You certainly cannot excuse these players — especially if they were betting on games involving their own team.

But you also cannot point a finger at them without also pointing a finger at professional sports leagues that have hopped into bed with the gambling industry. 

Not only are these billionaire owners giving their fans a not-so gentle nudge down that slippery slope to a gambling problem, they are pushing their own players down it, too.

Apparently, they just took the gambling money without giving the evils that they decried for decades a second thought.

Fans can bet from the front row, but players can’t place a bet from the locker room? On a completely different sport?

Professional sports have completely wiped away the line that used to protect the sport. The owners took the gambling money and just threw their players under the bus.

You have to wonder what Pete Rose thinks of all this.

I caught my footing and climbed back up the gambling slope before the old sports bar closed and the county tore it down.

Luckily, I got a hold of myself before internet gambling turned my phone into a live-in bookie. Otherwise, things could have gotten really ugly.

Thankfully, running into that fan with the Chiefs Underoos helped me see the light.

If I was betting from my phone on the couch, I might not have been so lucky.

— Bill Foley, who prefers Spider-Man Underoos, can be reached at foles74@gmail.com. Follow him at twitter.com/Foles74. Listen to the ButteCast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.