The NFL can't escape its own gambling messes

Let’s see now, where did I leave that $22 million?

I know it’s here, somewhere. My sock drawer? Night table? Nope.

Did I give it to Jon Rahm? Nah, he’s not in it for the money.

Oh, that’s right! Now I remember. I blew it all gambling on sports!

It was a huge story that made just a brief, small splash as per the NFL’s stats, standings and draft picks-obsessed, no-hard-questions-asked league-compliant media, but last week 31-year-old Amit Patel, an employee in the Jacksonville Jaguars’ finance department, was charged with stealing $22 million from the team over four years to fuel what his attorney characterized as “a serious gambling addiction.”

Yes, $22 million is just a few dollars beyond a mild addiction.

So how could the Jags, over four years, been so negligent as to miss millions of missing millions while Patel lavished purloined gifts on himself — a condo, a new cars and jewelry — amidst his hours spent accruing unfathomable gambling losses?

Did he plan to pay it back, 20 bucks a week? Or win back $22 million to break even?

How do you operate an accounting department that can’t even account for itself?

The good news for the NFL, Jags and Roger Goodell is that Patel reportedly blew most of it betting with FanDuel and DraftKings, both NFL-licensed bookmakers, thus the NFL can profit from some of Patel’s losses the next time their licensing agreements are up for renewal.

Not that Goodell’s watch is known for vigilance, but Patel was not the Jags’ CFO. He was what has been described as a midlevel management employee who stumbled upon the team’s new credit card system that allowed him the keys to the kingdom.

This is in line with Goodell’s management style as no one at or near the top of the NFL seems to know what the hell is going on — starting with opening kickoffs and games adjudicated by a rules book that has the sustaining clarity and rigidity of an Etch A Sketch.

And the only NFL betting lock is that there will be a drunken brawl among customers — Eagles’ misanthropes vs. Cowboys’ senior juvenile delinquents was this week’s main event — allowing Goodell’s “good investment,” double-billed patrons options: Step around the blood, buy a luxury suite, throw a few fists of their own or stay home — as long as they make a lot of bets.

It was perhaps a tribute to Goodell’s leadership that, after the Giants intercepted a Packers’ pass on Monday, the defense gathered in the end zone, where the classless gather for TV closeups, to perform another spontaneous (rehearsed) group skit, this one of them shooting craps.

We end this latest spitting-into-the-storm session with a question from reader Rick Lewis:

Sunday’s FanDuel “Same Game Parlay Special” was Rams-Ravens — “parlay” is the house’s polite term for “sucker.”

“Fans” were invited to bet the Ravens, laying 7.5, root for Rams’ WR Cooper Kupp and his QB Matthew Stafford to have big stat games and for Ravens’ QB Lamar Jackson to score a rushing TD.

Lewis: “How the heck can anyone enjoy that game if they bet this? Root for the Ravens but also root for Stafford to have a good game and, I guess, go deep to Kupp?

“What do you root for if the game is close? First-and-goal so Jackson can run one in? You need them to win by more than a field goal. My head would spin.”

On top of being a standard sucker bet, it was a special contradictory realities bet, like Goodell’s claim that PSLs are “good investments.”

But why would Goodell or his merry band of team owners and big league-certified sports books care? You’re no longer supposed to root for a team. You’re supposed to root for your money.

Saturday on ESPN, Missouri at Kansas. KU’s K.J. Adams ends a Missouri breakaway with a block from behind. It was somewhat easy as the Mizzou man slowed, never saw him coming.

Still, Adams quit playing to thump his chest in self-approval then gave a sustained all-about-me mean mug to the adoring crowd. Meanwhile, Kansas played four on five on the offensive end.

But the ESPN duo, Tom Hart and Fran Fraschilla, the latter we know to be a straighter shooter, were too busy gushing their approval of Adams to note the flip-side. Again, it’s that kind of hollow, don’t-believe-what-you-see pandering that’s making sports insufferable among the right-minded.

Showboaters lost at sea: Sunday, Chiefs’s WR Rashee Rice caught a short pass then rose and did one of those tired all-about-me first-down gestures. Soon, Rice would fumble the ball to the Bills in Buffalo’s 20-17 win.

Same game, final play. Chiefs’ WR Kadarius Toney, a self-absorbed pain in the arse as a quickly expendable first-round Giants pick, caught a downfield lateral then did a Deion Sanders strut into the end zone. He’d won the game!

But the TD and the game were lost to Toney lining up beyond the line of scrimmage, an easy call to make and tough one to ignore despite Patrick Mahomes’ postgame tantrum.

Mothers, don’t let your babies grow up to be court-stormers: Despite the clear, present and proven danger of court-storming it continues to be practiced then approved by college basketball TV yahoos who don’t want to risk the ridicule of young, foolish e-mailers, bloggers and wise guy-packed websites.

Last week at the close of Northwestern’s four-point home win over No. 3 Purdue, students rushed the court, an act less spontaneous than obligatory as the game clock was stopped, the outcome no longer in doubt, well before the storming.

But they stormed anyway. Two sprinting males, presumably students, tripped and fell to the court, but quickly rose to avoid being trampled.

Soon, too, will come the day when an agitated visiting player coldcocks a court-stormer into the intensive care unit.

A recent item here about the passing of Carl Erskine’s son Jimmy, who, with the Erskines’ love and conviction, lived a proudly productive and unusually long life with Down syndrome until passing last week at 63, stoked the embers among many old-timers who fondly recall Carl, now 96, as the most neighborly and pleasant of Brooklyn Dodgers pitchers.

Longtime Daily News sportswriter Bill Farrell, now retired, recalls covering a Brooklyn College seminar featuring MLB commissioner Bart Giamatti, a physicist and Erskine. The topic: Do fastballs rise?

After Giamatti and the physicist played pepper with the question, Erskine: “I can definitely confirm that a fastball rises — especially when struck by a Louisville Slugger.”

Not that we were surprised, but every play call in Sunday’ Texans-Jets was shouted by Kevin Harlan like it was the stretch run in the Kentucky Derby. Annoying and insulting. …

Saturday’s Army-Navy was not carried by a single local radio station, AM or FM. Sad. …

College Athletics Builds/Reveals Character Game of the Week: North Dakota St. 108, Oak Hills Christian College (Minn.) 14. …

On a diet? Wanna pass on the Tommy Cutlets? Reader Ken Ferber, inspired by Iron Butterfly, suggests the “In A Garden DeVito” salad.