As the crow flies, it’s roughly 658 miles from Iowa, La., to the Tampa, Fla., site of Monday’s ReliaQuest Bowl between LSU and Wisconsin.

But it’s doubtful that any player took a more winding road, with more detours, to get there than LSU’s Andre Sam.

And to think his college career started a mere 10 miles east of his Iowa hometown, just down I-10 at McNeese.

That was seven years ago, way back in 2017, following a star-studded career for his Yellowjackets.

But persistence pays off. He’ll be the Tigers’ starting safety Monday, as he has been for all 12 of this season’s games.

It certainly worked out for him.

Sam has been one of the bright spots in the midst of LSU’s defensive struggles.

He’s third on the team with 77 tackles, 39 of them solos, and leads the Tigers with three interceptions, with 60 yards in returns.

He had 14 tackles in the Ole Miss game alone.

But to get to the ReliaQuest Bowl as a Tiger, they almost had to invent a new classification for him.

He already played a senior season and a redshirt senior season at McNeese, where he spent five years with the Cowboys, redshirting his true freshman season before eventually twice earning All-Southland Conference honors.

Then it was on to Marshall, where he was what it is now known in the vernacular as a Super Senior.

That was last year, where Sam started 10 of 12 games for the Thundering Heard, before transferring to LSU for this year.

So what was he classified as for this season? A Super Duper Senior?

And how is he still playing college football — Monday, by the way, will definitely be his absolute last collegiate appearance.

It’s a long story. Very long. Sometimes complicated.

In fact, the bowl game Monday will be the 58th college game and 51st start of his college career, which includes three schools over the seven years.

If the dream was just to play in Tiger Stadium, he’d already marked that off the bucket list, albeit as a McNeese safety when the Cowboys played there in 2021.

But the primer for getting seven years of college football under your belt begins with a reshirt season in McNeese in 2017. No harm to the eligibility.

Then for the 2018 season he was injured early at McNeese and only played three games. A medical hardship redshirt was granted. Still no eligibility lost.

He was back for 2019 and finally played all dozen games at McNeese, started all 12 in fact.

So, finally, mark off one year of eligibility.

His next year was the screwy season that McNeese played, actually in 2021, after Covid forced the Southland Conference to move the schedule to the following spring.

Didn’t matter — the NCAA gave every college player a free pass, eligibility-wise, due to the Covid scare.

Thus he was back the next fall at McNeese, playing in the first of his three senior years, which included five tackles and pass breakup in that game against LSU in Tiger Stadium.

He capped his McNeese career with a second straight appearance on the All-Southland Conference team.o

Then it got interesting, with the transfer portal coming into play.

Lance Guidry, McNeese’s head coach when Sam was recruited, was by then defensive coordinator at Marshall and lured Sam to the Thundering Herd. The highlight there was probably his 10 tackles, one for a loss, in Marshall’s historic upset of Notre Dame last season.

Sam was apparently all set to follow Guidry to Tulane when Guidry got the Wave’s defensive coordinator job.

But when that ended up being little more than a Guidry toe tap in New Orleans — he was with the Wave only a few weeks before taking the same job at Miami — Sam transferred instead to LSU.

A long and winding road indeed.