When the Supreme Court legalized sports gambling in 2018, the N.F.L. rushed to embrace a lucrative line of business it had denounced for decades as bad for the sport. There was, after all, new money to be made. The consequences of that about-face are now coming due.
The league on Friday handed down some of the strictest penalties it has ever issued, banning three players for at least the 2023 season for betting on N.F.L. games and suspending two others for six games for other violations of the league’s betting policy. The scale of the latest scandal and the terse verdict from the league rekindles questions about the precarious line the N.