Full disclosure: I used to bet on football.

And it was fun.

Some of my happiest memories are New Year’s Days of yore, in a roomful of friends, trying to monitor seven different games. Never forget the Rose Bowl, 1996, when we all had Northwestern, whose late touchdown against Southern Cal ensured the old backside cover.

Joy.

Then the camera zipped to the referee who called the touchdown back for holding.

Pain.

Oh, the things we called that poor official.

Or the musings of my late, great friend Humphrey Scott, who gave me four pieces of advice when I moved here 22 years ago: “Get your grinders at Terrace Bakery, your haircuts by Danny and Louie (at the Thames Barber Shop), never bet the Giants as a home favorite and always bet the Bruins at home on a Saturday afternoon.”

But I digress.

The point: Betting was fun.

I don’t bet anymore because I can’t. My guys are out of the business. It is a constant source of irritation. Know why? Because there is nothing else — nothing — that exposes governmental, institutional and societal hypocrisy better than our stance on gambling.

Lotteries. NCAA brackets. Super Bowl pools. Casinos. Now state-offered Keno.

But heaven forbid I want to throw 20 bucks parlaying the Giants and Cleveland Browns.

Now there’s “draftkings.com,” and “fanduel.com,” both trumpeting “daily fantasy sports for cash.” So let’s see: You throw down money and whether you win is determined by the outcome of a sporting event.

That’t not gambling?

Really?

Who knew semantics could be so powerful?

And so once again, is there somebody — anybody — out there willing to carry the torch to legalize sports betting and have mercy on us poor saps who miss the action?

So I asked the great Mitchell Etess, the outgoing CEO at Mohegan Sun, to educate me.

“(Sports betting) is illegal under federal law,” Etess said Wednesday after playing in the Travelers Pro Am, “mainly because all the major sports leagues are against it.”

Etess speaks of “PASPA,” the 1992 legislation called the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, which generally prohibits states from authorizing sports betting.

At least one major sports commissioner, Adam Silver, the poohbah of the National Basketball Association, sees the hypocrisy. Silver wrote a generally brilliant op-ed piece in the New York Times last November calling for legalized sports betting.

“Times have changed since PASPA was enacted. Gambling has increasingly become a popular and accepted form of entertainment in the United States,” Silver wrote, alluding to the proliferation of casinos, lotteries and how an estimated $400 billion is wagered on sports illegally every year.

“There is an obvious appetite among sports fans for a safe and legal way to wager on professional sporting events,” Silver wrote. “Mainstream media outlets regularly publish sports betting lines and point spreads. … Outside of the United States, sports betting and other forms of gambling are popular, widely legal and subject to regulation. In England, for example, a sports bet can be placed on a smartphone, at a stadium kiosk or even using a television remote control.”

(Pause here to hyperventilate).

“In light of these domestic and global trends, the laws on sports betting should be changed,” Silver wrote. “Congress should adopt a federal framework that allows states to authorize betting on professional sports, subject to strict regulatory requirements and technological safeguards.”

Silver believes mandatory monitoring and reporting of unusual betting-line movements, licensing protocols and education are among the safeguards needed, all with the baseline interest of protecting the integrity of the game.

Etess said that if sports betting became legal, Mohegan Sun would profit, but not in the way common sense might suggest.

“We wouldn’t make a lot on the sports betting per se,” he said. “But it would be a great traffic-driver to the property. The first day of the NCAA tournament, for example, would attract a lot more people to the property than usual for that day. The same is true with a lot of big sporting event days.”

It’s the same theory as to why Mohegan Sun Arena is successful. There’s modest money to be made the night of a concert or a Sun game on, say, ticket sales. But if 7,500 more people visit the property who might not have otherwise, the restaurants, shops, tables and slots benefit.

Kudos to Silver for his foresight. Major sports leagues act like Capt. Renault in Casablanca when he says he’s shocked — shocked! — gambling is going on in Rick’s.

The tipping point has to come soon. We just added Keno here in the land of steady habits. We can, as draftkings indicates, win “more than a billion dollars guaranteed!”

But the football Giants as a two-point dog on Sunday night?

Illegal, dammit.

This is the opinion of Day sports columnist Mike DiMauro.

Twitter: @BCgenius