Even the most exciting games now come with a price, a challenge to swallow what you can’t stomach. It’s the modern barter system: In order to enjoy, you must suspend your sense of common sense.

Has the last-play “hero” of any game ever looked like a bigger jerk than Vikings wide receiver Stefon Diggs did?

First, despite Diggs’ post-touchdown peacocking, the Vikings are not playing in the NFC Championship game because he “made a play,” then “took it to the house” with :00 on the clock.

The Vikes are alive because of two steadily regressive elements of fundamental football: 1) players’ pitiful unawareness of game and clock circumstances, and 2) the continued replacement of tackling with risky attempts to cause a fumble or injury by using one’s body as a no-hands, often misguided missile.

And when Saints defensive back Marcus Williams performed the torpedo technique when a mere two-armed wrap-up would have ended the game, he whiffed.

On FOX, Troy Aikman was flabbergasted, as if he couldn’t understand why Williams didn’t understand. But Aikman should by now know that such is modern football.

There was some recent-history kismet at play in the play. It was the Saints, under incumbent coach Sean Payton, who in 2012 were hit with fines, suspensions and draft-pick losses for a “bounty” program that rewarded those who disabled opponents rather than merely tackling them.

Next, Diggs, after he reached the Saints’ 10-yard line, held the ball aloft with one hand, apparently with no sense of continuing history, beginning with Leon Lett in 1993. Diggs was eager to risk immortal infamy — dropping the ball while or after raising it, one-handed — in exchange for worthless self-aggrandizement.

But that’s modern pro football, too.

When Diggs was next seen at length, he was standing atop a sideline bench, posing before a crescent of photographers, no teammates in view, his arms folded and with a self-satisfied scowl on his face.

Yep, Diggs did it all by himself. And he left the right-headed with the clear message that despite his talent, much like Odell Beckham Jr., among dozens of others, he’s tough to root for.

But that, too, is grimace-and-bear-it modern football.

In Sunday’s earlier game, the Steelers may have won the first Roger Goodell Spontaneous Fun Trophy for most acts of individual gloating in a losing playoff game.

After wide receiver Eli Rogers ran for a first down off a shovel pass, he slowly rose to perform his all-about-me, first-down preen. That the Steelers were down, 21-0, the clock running, made no difference.

One would think that by now, Steelers coach Mike Tomlin, among all coaches, would have schooled his troops on game and clock awareness.

After all, his Steelers nearly lost the 2009 Super Bowl because receiver Santonio Holmes, with Pittsburgh down three to the Cardinals, under a minute left and the clock running, decided to take a check-me-out downfield stroll after a catch-and-run. That forced the Steelers, with Ben Roethlisberger looking to go hurry-up and perhaps spike the ball, to call their last timeout.

Yet on CBS Sunday, Ian Eagle and Dan Fouts said nothing about the Steelers’ time-wasting demonstrations of self-affection, although such behavior surely struck increasingly disgusted and disaffected viewers — ratings are way down — as absurd.

Heck, after Pittsburgh’s Robert Golden blocked a Jaguars punt, he immediately began to run in self-celebration — while the ball was still free.

But this is the modern game. The middle ground — the space between love it or left it — demands considerable and escalating sacrifice, starting with one’s suspension of indisputable common sense.

ESPN in no rush to decry court-storming

So where are all those pandering ESPN college basketball yahoos to renew their approval of court-storming after West Virginia’s student-athlete, 6-foot-8 Wesley Harris, belted a court-storming Texas Tech student Saturday following the Red Raiders’ 72-71 win?

That was just one of several players-fans skirmishes at the end of the game, the result of what ESPN analysts have blessed as school-spirited fun.

This one led to Harris’s public reprimand and Texas Tech being fined $25,000 by the Big 12 for its inability to ensure the safety of the visiting team.

Apparently the Big 12 is less concerned about whether court-rushing audience participants are swept up, knocked down and trampled.

That the issue is even debated tells us that such “fun” defies the human condition, that the losing team doesn’t much want to be surrounded, let alone mobbed and jostled, by those rushing the floor to celebrate the win — especially after a one-point loss.

Only Jay Williams, among ESPN’s analysts, gave court-storming — now almost obligatory with TV’s presence and encouragement — the thumbs-down as clearly dangerous.

Williams, the former Duke star, spoke from hard-earned empirical wisdom: His NBA career ended after one season due to a motorcycle accident.

So the NBA on Monday had its most uncivilized day of the season: 21 technical fouls, five ejections and a postgame attempt by several Rockets, apparently looking to rumble, to storm the Clippers’ locker room, resulting in two suspensions.

Given all the solemn pregame ceremonies, speeches and group reflection, is it impolite or impolitic to note that all of the above occurred on Martin Luther King Jr. Day?

Knicks TV guys won’t be homers

The next time you even contemplate the possibility that MSG’s Mike Breen and Clyde Frazier might be homers, consider the Knicks’ game Wednesday at Memphis, when Breen and Frazier questioned the Knicks’ “character” and “commitment” as the team lost 105-99 to the injury-depleted Grizzlies. That’s tough love.

Jets “good investment” PSL suckers got a sarcastic kick out of Tuesday’s stories about the team reducing ticket prices.

Phil Murphy was sworn in as New Jersey’s governor Tuesday, replacing Chris (The Situation) Christie. Still no word as to how often Murphy will abandon his sworn duty to co-host shows on WFAN, and on taxpayers’ time and money.

Brattish, bellicose CoCo Vandeweghe is another American on the international tennis scene whose conduct makes USA-based unconditional rooting impossible.

Since 1993, Langan’s, around the corner and down the street from The Post, was the lunch and after-work place — the home away from home, but with better service, a larger menu and receipts for expense accounts. And as owner Des O’Brien agreed, “50,000 flies couldn’t be wrong!”

But one of those prohibitive rent hikes made Thursday night Langan’s last night.

Now it’s off to O’Brien’s next-closest place, cleverly named O’Brien’s, on West 46th Street between Sixth and Seventh avenues. Des claims he’s working on a new cocktail, The Jubilee Dunbar.