The National Collegiate Athletic Association on Thursday dropped its longstanding refusal to hold its championship events in jurisdictions where fans are allowed to wager on individual games, sending a conciliatory signal to states moving quickly to legalize sports betting.
The announcement by one of the most stalwart opponents of sports gambling underscores how the landscape has shifted in a matter of days, since the US Supreme Court ruled on Monday that states are free to make their own laws on sports betting, clearing the way for an expansion across the country.
NCAA officials said they could revisit the temporary decision, but observers said it might be difficult to do so. Many states, enticed by the prospect of tax revenues and relaxing social mores around gambling, are racing toward legalization, which could disqualify many attractive sites.
“I think you’re seeing a generational value shift here,’’ said Ken Cosgrove, professor of government at Suffolk University in Boston.
The decision to suspend the ban could bring NCAA tournament games to Las Vegas, and free other states, including Massachusetts, to legalize sports gambling without the fear of losing the ability to host the contests.
The NCAA men’s basketball tournament, known as March Madness, is one of the most popular betting events in the country. The American Gaming Association estimated that Americans wagered more than $10 billion on this year’s tournament, with just 3 percent wagered legally through Nevada sports books.
Outside of Nevada, gambling on college sports is largely illegal — despite the widespread, if small-change, bets on NCAA brackets in office pools and other venues around the country every spring.
The NCAA, which lost a legal battle that ended with the Supreme Court ruling, said it will now focus on pushing for federal laws that will govern sports betting across the country.
“Sports wagering can adversely impact student-athletes and undermine the games they play,’’ NCAA president Mark Emmert said in a statement. “We are committed to ensuring that laws and regulations promote a safe and fair environment for the nearly half a million students who play college athletics.’’
Industry specialists said standardizing the rules around sports gambling at the national level could prevent a patchwork system similar to state laws governing marijuana. But Congress has shown little sign of acting quickly on the question of legalized sports gambling.
The major professional leagues have also been struggling over how to respond to the prospect of legalized gambling, but the NCAA is different. Its players are amateurs, and though some of its sports are quite lucrative, legalized gambling brings unique threats to the integrity of the games.
“I suspect that the college athlete would be even more susceptible to some sort of corruption, game fixing, stuff like that, just based on the economics,’’ said Luke Bonner, a former UMass Amherst basketball player who graduated in 2009. “You have way more to lose if you’re a professional athlete who’s already making millions of dollars.’’
Bonner, who now owns the player advocacy and marketing firm Power Forward Sports Group in New Hampshire, said the legalization of gambling would only exacerbate the discontent of players who feel they deserve a share of the wealth generated by college sports.
There are other observers who feel that college sports should be treated differently than professional games as governments consider gambling laws.
The expanded gambling law that led to the high court decision prohibits betting on college events played in New Jersey or involving schools in the state, for instance. Rhode Island is considering a bill that takes a similar approach.
While the Massachusetts Legislature has not taken up a proposal to legalize sports gambling, the state has previously banned collegiate and amateur sports from paid daily fantasy contests.
Amy Perko, chief executive of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, said she’s concerned by the message that the NCAA is sending. She fears the organization may have given up some leverage in its discussions with states.
“I just don’t understand why they had to make that decision today,’’ Perko said. “It seems to me that the focus of university leaders should really be about right now doing their best to protect the integrity of the college sports games and the athletes that participate in them.’’
Leaders of Massachusetts colleges with major athletic programs said Thursday that they were still reviewing the Supreme Court’s decision and had not come to any conclusions about what it would mean for them.
Michael McCann, director of the Sports and Entertainment Law Institute at the University of New Hampshire, said it’s possible that colleges will eventually adopt their own approaches to gambling, which could provide significant income.
As evidence of the economic importance of college athletics, he pointed to the many institutions whose football and basketball coaches are the top-paid employees.
“When a coach makes $10 million a year — he works at a public university, and he makes 10 times or more what the president of the university makes — it clearly shows priorities,’’ McCann said. “With that mindset, those schools might be more inclined to accept sports betting.’’
With some estimates placing the market for illegal sports betting at $150 billion, some argue that the NCAA should accept the pervasiveness of gambling and recognize players as the economic engines that they are.
“It’s going to make it that much harder for the NCAA to push their messaging around the purity of amateurism,’’ Bonner said. “In recent years, the curtain has been lifted pretty extremely, and I’m not sure that message is resonating like it used to.’’
Andy Rosen can be reached at andrew.rosen@globe.com.
