Here is a round-up of the latest scores from American sport.

Tim Donaghy, one of the leading referees in the National Basketball Association, last week pleaded guilty to two felony counts related to gambling on professional basketball games in which he had officiated. He admitted using his inside knowledge of the game to help a co-conspirator (who went by the aliases of “Baba” and “Sheep”) stake tens of thousands of dollars on ten or more games in the past couple of years. He faces up to 25 years in prison.

Michael Vick, the star quarterback for American football’s Atlanta Falcons is pondering a guilty plea to charges relating to his membership of a dogfighting syndicate called Bad Newz Kennels. The group arranged gruesome bouts and Vick — according to his codefendants — was personally responsible for killing eight dogs that failed to show sufficient resilience in “test bouts”. He faces up to six years in prison.

In baseball, Barry Bonds, the 43-year-old slugger for the San Francisco Giants who has just broken the record for the most home runs scored — 756 — in a career, still struggles to escape from the suspicion of steroid abuse.

Bonds broke Hank Aaron’s hallowed record to a howl of raspberries from many neutral fans, who fail to believe his claims to a grand jury that substances he had received from a friend, who was subsequently indicted for supplying anabolic steroids to athletes, were merely arthritis cream and flaxseed oil.

If there’s been any good news for the reputation of US sport this summer, besides David Beckham’s debut goal for the Los Angeles Galaxy last week, it may have been that the now customary annual doping allegations against Tour de France riders for once do not seem to have involved any Americans.

Gambling, violence and illegal drugs have long been a part of US sport, just as they have been a part of American society. But, while violent crime and drug use (if not gambling) are down in most of the country, they seem to be proliferating in professional sport.

And yet for all the controversy the latest wave of scandals has generated, the sports seems to go on largely unfazed. The authorities issue stern warnings, newspapers express outrage and late-night comedians catch the public’s derision. But the fans still turn out for games and the sports still generate more and more billions of dollars.

Baseball attendances have been rising for years, despite the apparently ubiquitous instances of drug-taking. Misdemeanours by professional footballers seem virtually epidemic – drugs, violent crime and sexual assault being apparently routine for some teams. Last year fans were betting on how many members of the Cincinnati Bengals would be under criminal investigation by season’s end (the number reached nine). But football gets bigger commercially every year.

The reputation of many NBA players has been cloudy for some time. One of the more amusing spectacles last week was that of basketball players lining up to complain at the behaviour of an official of the sport. But the brand power of basketball remains unequalled among America’s youth.

The sports authorities seem to have little inclination to impose discipline in their sports. Baseball has turned a blind eye to drug use for years. The NBA has been slow to address the problem of gambling and bent refereeing. The NFL has just got around to imposing a new rule that makes criminal behaviour incompatible with playing football professionally.

Of course, money is at the root of the authorities’ reticence. Banning star players might look good from an ethical standpoint, but it can only hurt the bottom line.

In fact there’s more than a slight suspicion that scandal and controversy actually helps drive ratings.

Across America this year people have been showing up wherever Bonds has played merely to get a glimpse of the bête noire of American sport. Only a brave man would bet that Vick’s troubles would not result in bigger audiences for him – if he manages to stay out of jail.

Gambling, of course, is trickier than malicious violence or illicit drug-taking. If fans get a sense that games are being routinely rigged, their tolerance for the general lawlessness that seems to infect sport might diminish.

Who wants to watch a sport where the outcome is prefabricated, a piece of pure theatre, where the players are merely going through the motions for entertainment purposes?

Then again, consider this. One of the fastest-growing sports in terms of popularity these days is professional wrestling.