It seems that electronic pull-tabs and bingo aren’t generating enough money to pay off Tubby Smith, much less fund the state’s portion of a new football stadium.

And it additionally develops that estimates for the money generated by electronic gaming pretty much came from the electronic gaming industry, which was not a hidden fact but now a convenient one for the governor to put up in defense of a bad stadium bill.

As an aside, I have talked to practiced barroom gamblers who disavow the electronic games because they enjoy the tactile experience of peeling cardboard into big piles of recyclable material. And I suspect Grandma needs an actual bingo card on her table with a big ink marker and her lucky charms and whatever because that is the way bingo has been played in church basements since the Reformation.

So, yes, it was wildly optimistic to think that electronic gaming could provide for most of the state’s $348 million obligation to the advertised $975 million cost of the new stadium.

More crucially, we have been thoroughly fleeced by the Zygi Wilf crew, who know their rubes when they see them. Unlike the Pohlads, who actually wrote checks, I’m not sure Wilf will ever have to touch his own wallet.

Our eyes should have been opened wider when it became known that the National Football League, making it sound like they were being benevolent, would loan the Vikings $200 million that they can pay back using game receipts over 15 years. Hmmmm.

OK, then factor in that Wilf gets 100 percent of the naming rights, which can amount to hundreds of millions of dollars over time. Supposedly Wilf is to come up with $427 million of the cost. Well, the friendly “wink, wink” loan and the naming rights seem to take care of that.

Somebody will have to point out to me where exactly in this process does Wilf write a check. At the very least, the manufactured angst expressed by the Vikings over whether the price can include a retractable roof is spectacularly bold. You pay for the roof, Zygi. You don’t appear to be paying for anything else.

We’re relying on Grandma to fire up the 15-year-old Buick and get to a bingo hall while Zygi is furnishing his newest penthouse in New York.

I will be among the first to apologize. It used to be in the old journalism game that we caught these things. I guess I am apologizing for being nave. I didn’t think it was possible to get a billion-dollar stadium without the guy standing to benefit from it — a new stadium will make the Vikings worth considerably more than Wilf paid for them — forking over great chunks of the cost.

That doesn’t appear to be the case. Oh, have I mentioned what he might take in from seat licenses?

Now, the governor can wail and moan all he wants to about the overly optimistic electronic gambling proceeds, but he has a chance here to take a bigger step and call a time-out. I suppose this deal is ironclad and passed into law so that he can’t literally tear up the paper the bill was written on.

But he has a bully pulpit to pound his fist on and say, “Hey, Zygi, we need to talk. It is true that you saw us falling off a turnip truck, but we have gotten up and slapped the dust off our trousers and we need to adjust the handicaps before the steam shovels arrive.”

Call his bluff. He isn’t going anywhere. He isn’t going anywhere because there isn’t a legislature in the country, not even in California, that would be stupid enough to build the guy a free stadium.

Come on, Mark, you want to go after people who make $150,000 a year because you think they are wealthy. Zygi has that tied up in shoes.

Joe Soucheray can be reached at jsoucheray@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-5474. Soucheray is heard from 1 to 4 p.m. weekdays on 1500 ESPN.