Well, if you were one of the millions watching the NFL yesterday, chances are you saw a laundry list of online betting commercials.

DraftKings, FanDuel, MGM, you name it.

It's hard to watch anything or go anywhere without being exposed to sports betting.

Well, now lawmakers are drawing a line in the sand, introducing legislation to keep sports betting out of one of New Jersey's major institutions, our universities.

Ted Goldberg has the story.

Commercials for sports gambling are everywhere.

In the short time that sports betting has been legal in New Jersey, these ads have infiltrated anywhere you can watch sports.

I think the rapid ascension of sports betting here in the state of New Jersey is something that I don't know if we all planned for.

I mean, everywhere you look, you know, social media, TV events, you see things about sports betting.

Almost every major sports league has a deal, has partnerships with online betting groups.

The ads during sports games are almost all for betting sites.

Lawmakers say associations with sports betting are more than just a nuisance.

They're a safety concern.

A few years ago, voters rejected an amendment that would have overturned a longstanding rule banning bets on New Jersey college teams or college games taking place in the Garden State.

Now the Assembly Higher Education Committee wants to go further, advancing a bill today that would ban betting partnerships at schools statewide unless a partnership provides, quote, experiential learning opportunities for students.

Both sides of the aisle, we realize that we have to put guards up to protect, you know, our residents and particularly companies.

Statistics that show male betters being an issue that we have to make sure that we have things in place for them.

The online slot machines and the online betting on sports are most popular among men under the age of 30.

This is a group that typically doesn't go to casinos.

And we also see that this group is when they're doing these games, they are much more likely to fall into the problem gambling behavior.

You might not know it from his name, but FDU poll leader Dan Cassino has issues with how widespread gambling has become.

We're raising a generation of people who are going to have gambling problems going forward in life.

This is not something people get over easily or quickly.

He says numbers show that people are more likely to become problem gamblers from bets that can pay off immediately.

The scratch off tickets, because there's that immediate feedback or about twice as likely to lead to problem gambling behaviors.

Now, when you stretch that out and say, all right, what about gambling where it's instant and you don't even have to go to the convenience store to play it?

So this we're talking about online gambling.

Well, that's likely to lead to much more problematic behaviors.

And he says gambling on sports is closer to scratch off tickets than the lottery.

The reasoning for this is pretty clear, right?

You can bet every single play on sports, on slot machines, just push the button one more time and make something back.

This is also considered to be now part of the way you enjoy sports.

I mean, even a dull football game can be interesting if you're betting on what's going on in every single play.

An amendment to today's bill allows limited partnerships, drawing criticism from casino and praise from the state's Association of State Colleges and Universities.

Allowing this balance in terms of ensuring that our students remain as as safe as possible, but at the same time recognizing that this can be a valuable career for them.

Is that balance And we appreciate the work that the sponsor did to try to find that proper balance.

Those partnerships are really, really problematic because what it's doing essentially incentivizing colleges and universities to push their students towards gambling, saying the contribution to make money by having their students gamble on things and we don't need anyone else encouraging young people to be doing this sort of gambling.

In response to the story, the Council of Compulsive Gambling of New Jersey sent a statement which reads in part, The council strongly discourages such partnerships since the majority of university students are below the legal age of gambling and research has consistently shown that those under 21 who participate in or are exposed to gambling are far more likely to develop gambling problems later in life.

This bill responds to the fact that several universities made the Faustian deal of partnering with sports betting companies as betting looms larger and larger in college sports.

The image of the amateur athlete recedes and seems to belong to a more innocent time.

This is a loss for everyone.

One illegal situation is one too many.

The new leadership that we have in sports betting and tourism and stuff like that, I think we all would agree that we should head things off before they get to a point that becomes an issue.

At the State House, I'm Ted Goldberg.

NJ Spotlight News.