You know the chant. It’s the chorus of the compromised, those tethered to money-diminished principles they explain as, “Well, it’s no worse than this” and “It’s no worse than that.”

But what’s it ever better than?

So much change is now predicated on hollow, sorry, cashier-window rationalizations.

When I was kid and taken to old Yankee Stadium for 1 p.m. weekend games — a logical, fan- and family-embracing time to play baseball, now largely lost to big-market TV money — there was a prominent sign on the outfield scoreboard. It carried the foreboding caution: “Gambling Strictly Prohibited.”

I wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, but I knew enough to know that gambling couldn’t be good, like spitting, using bad language or asking what happened to Cousin Jerome.

Now there’s a rush by every pro team, league and mass media enterprise to promote gambling — to partner with gambling operations — in order to race state governments for their share of the profits.

While the primary mission of gambling operations is to have customers lose their money, no commissioner or team owner would dare go on record telling that indisputable truth. Otherwise:

“Dearest Fans — We don’t want you to just gamble on our players, teams and games through our partner bookies, we want you to lose your money in that pursuit, losses guaranteed by house odds and meager payouts.

“We don’t care if your sense of the sport and its players are forever skewed or even abandoned to gambling and gambling’s attendant stench of suspicion and mistrust. Think what you will. Besides, with the bad odds and payouts the fix is already in.

“Your new daily and/or nightly job is to feed our new profit-sharing plan by losing your money to our new business partners.

“We’re now in the betting business. And no such business is designed for you, fans hopefully turned gamblers, to win. How could it otherwise exist and survive as a business, you saps?

“We don’t care if you lose your money and your good sense of our sports, as long as you gamble on them, preferably often and a lot.

“Yours In Sport, the Guardians of the Games, the Commissioners.”

Of course, not one commissioner, team owner or players’ union head would speak such an indisputable truth. There’s too much of the house’s cut to chase.

Gambling operations, legal and illegal, are predicated on customers losing their money. Period, end story.

And the more vulnerable the gambler — even if previously disinclined to seek to place a bet on games — the more cash-register music to the ears of the pied pipers, until, of course, the institutionally suckered wake up or tap out, perhaps 28 percent credit-card debt interest thrown in.

Our pro sports’ latest mission is to create losing gamblers from those once cherished as fans. Suck them in, carve them up, hope they boost or maintain the value of TV contracts, then dump the carcasses for curbside pickup.

The failure to reveal or even acknowledge such an incontrovertible truth is equally shameful and unsurprising. Next stop: Ancient Rome.

‘Ill-advised’ commentary best left unsaid

Consider how much goofy hindsight is spoken during sports telecasts.

Monday night, after Cowboys QB Dak Prescott overthrew an open receiver, ESPN’s Booger McFarland, from somewhere in his Rubber Booger Buggy, slugged us with the tired: “He’d like to have that one back!”

Thursday night, Panthers QB Cam Newton, on first-and-10 from his 11, was about to be sacked in the end zone by the Steelers’ T.J. Watt. So Newton, while being hit and off balance, heaved the ball down field.

It was intercepted and returned for a TD by LB Vince Williams.

Fox’s Troy Aikman: “It was an ill-advised pass.”

Sure, in hindsight. But if the ball had been heaved incomplete — Newton’s likely intention — his decision would be praiseworthy for his situational sense.

So the pass became “ill-advised.” Thus Aikman felt Newton should have pursued his other option: surrendering a first-down safety?

You don’t have to like mega-agent Scott Boras to recognize when he tells some hard truths.

Last week his public recognition that new Mets GM and recent big-firm agent Brodie Van Wagenen arrives loaded with ethical issues — conflicts of business, allegiance, confidential players’ information and other curious, if not dubious, circumstances — was and remains the truth.

But such is Mets’ ownership. It can always be found on the windward side of the stink.

Geno Auriemma Game of the Week: Tuesday at home, following a 74-50 win in its opener, Division I Savannah State’s women’s basketball team defeated Division III Wesleyan (Ga.) by 129 points, 155-26.

Three SSU starters played more than half the game, one for 28 minutes. One SSU sub played two minutes.

And as reader Marcus Holland notes, Wesleyan had just eight available players. But NCAA student-athletics build character!

Fans gonna go crazy for free agents who are lazy

This offseason’s big-ticket free agents include Manny Machado and Bryce Harper, both disinclined to run to first base. The “winners” of the auctions can hike ticket prices for patrons to witness their chronic lethargy.

Tuesday, recognizing that Dallas will play at Philly on Sunday on NBC, reader Kenny Kaplan issued this tout: The Eagles will wear their tradition-be-damned, now-on-sale black uniforms. Friday came word: Kaplan was right.

Golf buddy/horse trainer Joe Holloway has been elected to the Harness Racing Hall of Fame.

So Rex Ryan is still acting like a creep, even taking a cheap shot at the father of injured DTs Joey and Nick Bosa as the sire of players who fake injuries. Terms of engagement. ESPN hired Ryan because as a coach he behaved like a big-mouthed creep.

Seems the media are now more focused on MLB’s free agents rather than advocating the restoration of practical common sense in baseball — before it’s far too late. Or have GMs and managers already determined their assigned-inning relievers, starting in the sixth?

Why root for the Nets until it’s again too late? To increase attention to their alert, candid WFAN radio team, Chris Carrino and Tim Capstraw, established in 2002.

Stats that won’t be spoken or seen Sunday on TV: The NFL leader in third-down efficiency is 4-4 Atlanta. Indianapolis, at 3-5, is second. The Bucs, 3-5, are fifth. The 3-5 Jags are ninth. The 6-2 Chargers are 24th.

On this day in 1946, the Knicks played their first game in the “old” Garden. Under former Manhattan College player and coach Neil Cohalan, they lost in OT to the Chicago Stags. What’s that? Yes, Mike Francesa was in his usual front-row seats.