Excuse me, but which way to the nearest Transfer Portal?

Another football season, this renewed opportunities to wonder: “Why can’t they just let us watch the game?”

Already Kirk Herbstreit, who broke in at ESPN speaking discernible pigskin before falling in love with the sound of his imagined brilliance, has set sail on his ship for fools. Monday during Louisville-Ole Miss he explained the self-evident:

“This is how you run the outside stretch. You just kinda work, find a crease, stick your foot in the ground on that fifth step and get north and south.”

Give me liberty or make me deaf! Ridiculous! The running back simply found a hole and ran through it for 8 yards!

“Stick your foot in the ground” was once concisely and clearly known as a “cut.” “Getting north and south” on the same play? But first he counted five steps? Make it stop!

But this is where we are. Tackled for a loss? That’s “negative yardage” caused by “a negative play.” QBs who scramble out of unforeseen trouble — or try to — now try to “extend the play,” as if that was the play that was “dialed up.”

Thus what used to be fun to watch has regressed to a burden.

If last season you grew sick of the NFL doubling as a highly selective and insulting racial and political lobby, the NFL doesn’t care. Roger Goodell, frightened senseless to be called a racist by wishful activists and fringe lunatics, will continue to presume that all viewers and customers are racists in immediate need of counseling.

Again this season, all will be urged by the NFL to reject their racist ways — no specifics given so they can work on even one of their oppressive habits. There again will be end-zone messages to “End Racism,” and now conspicuous helmet slogans to that same end worn by players, many bereft of lawful or minimally civil comportment.

Reader Mike Jacobs: “Let’s see, $300 tickets, thousands for personal seat licenses, $20 beers, surly vendors, surlier fans, night games in cold weather cities, moronic TV announcers, selfish players and now helmets that tell me what a bad guy I am.”

The NFL remains tethered to a profound crime problem among its players, yet pandering Goodell gives it all a look-away pass to remind the league’s most devoted fans and fools that they’re racists, first, football fans, later.

Then he invites N-wording, women-degrading, vulgar rappers and prurient pole-dancing acts to perform at the Super Bowl, now a viewers’ family discretion event.

But football fans have been devalued on Goodell’s watch. The NFL is now devoted to adding gamblers in pursuit of a greater cut of “fans’” losses that gambling operations guarantee by design.

We now have Drew Brees, once regarded as among the NFL’s most highly regarded gentlemen and sportsmen, appearing in TV ads to shill for a football gambling company.

And don’t forget to get rich, as per TV and radio “make it rain!” advertising, betting parlays! Even if they’re major sucker bets, which is why parleys are heavily promoted by NFL-certified bookmakers.

Run north and south? Only the house, including the NFL and NFLPA, is allowed to bet the south, the direction gamblers inevitably travel. And the house always wins, its visitors welcomed back until they tap out.

This is the business the NFL and its partner TV networks have entered en force.

Of course, Goodell, purveyor of colossally mixed messages, is never asked to explain his 2009 testimony in which he decried legalized NFL gambling as a fast-lane route to ruin for families, the perception of football as a sport, and the destruction of trust in the integrity of NFL games.

So stick your foot in the ground, stop oppressing minorities and bet with both fists.

Sloane Stephens, after losing in the U.S. Open, said she was trashed in vulgar racist terms on “social” media.

Of course, she was. Social media has become the safe harbor for hit-and-run techno-vandals. One no longer needs to spray-paint the playground walls.

As I’ve received plenty of hate-filled emails, here’s my advice: Hit “delete” then move on. Never publicly play to anyone’s bigotry or hatred. It may sting to read, but, in time it becomes easier to dismiss.

Reader Bill Deletconich: Given that two days earlier, after winning her match, Stephens presumably was not targeted by such vitriol, is it possible that at least some of it came from gamblers who’d bet on her?

It can’t be dismissed. Sports once known for the civil comportment of on-site fans — tennis and golf — have steadily grown more raucous and unruly, often with TV’s mindless urging, and gamblers have more reasons than most to be bad losers.

Additionally, if spectators at this Open merely applauded a well-played point, ESPN ignored them. Instead, any fool who jumped up, spun around and excessively demonstrated — the Spike Lee Method, as if he’d act that way if watching alone — were rewarded with the attention they craved.

Gambling on PGA events, as invited by the PGA along with marked-up booze, has to be accountable for at least some of the increasingly disruptive and highly personal misconduct toward players.

The Ryder Cup, once celebrated for good sportsmanship among competitors and crowds, has regressed to a holy war, with missed putts and balls hit into ponds loudly cheered, and knuckleheads such as Patrick “Captain America” Reed joining TV come-ons urging spectators to prove their patriotism by acting like louts.

And now has the growth of legalized gambling increased hateful rancor toward pro golfers and tennis players, the kind once reserved for jockeys and harness drivers? I wouldn’t bet against it.

Notre Dame, which usually plays an admirably tough schedule, Saturday is home against Toledo, one of those paid-to-lose numbers that season’s ticket holders are forced to buy, a pot from which Toledo will be paid $1 million.

Also contributing to that pot is NBC, which owns rights to all ND home games, but has switched this one to its nascent pay-to-subscribe Peacock streaming channel.

This football game is about money, not football. Notre Dame and Toledo fans, as well as anyone curious to see if Toledo can keep it competitive, can otherwise go to hell.

There were some superb defensive plays in Saturday’s Penn St,-Wisconsin. Too bad Fox is conditioned to instead choose to concentrate on players celebrating themselves after good plays.

Someone on YES, Wednesday, could’ve simply said that Yanks’ reliever Lucas Luetge just threw his 10th consecutive cutter. Instead Michael Kay spoke it as it was shown, along with each cutter’s mph, in a vertical, 10-box graphic, as if anyone had the time or inclination to read it.

Certainly Gary Cohen, Ron Darling or Keith Hernandez during SNY’s Mets-Marlins, Wednesday, would note that with the game tied in the 10th, call-up catcher Patrick Mazeika, batting .197, pinch hit for James McCann, an offseason acquisition for $40.6 million over four. But none did.