Gee, and to think it wasn’t that long ago that LSU was known as a quarterback wasteland, a championship program in a seemingly futile search for a serviceable QB1 to guide it. 

No more. 

LSU should make the check payable to: ESPN “Monday Night Football,” with maybe a little extra on the side for “SportsCenter,” with Scott Van Pelt and LSU alum Ryan Clark. 

Monday night was basically a tidy little four-hour informercial for LSU disguised as the NFL’s weekly show pony. 

It turned out to be a national coming out party for the Washington Commanders’ Jayden Daniels, the Tigers’ most recent Heisman Trophy winner last year. 

His team won. 

Everybody already knew about the Bengals’ Joe Burrow, who picked up his Heisman Trophy in 2019 shortly before guiding the Tigers to an undefeated national championship. 

His team lost. 

It ended with a heartfelt hug between the two, even though they were never at LSU at the same time. 

So no hard feelings, no harm done. 

But LSU itself was the biggest winner after both shined in a highly entertaining game. 

If before Monday night there was anybody who didn’t remember that both perfected their craft at LSU, they surely do now. 

The ESPN broadcast team gushed over them all night long. 

“You just get the feeling that everybody over on that Washington sideline knows they’ve got something in Jayden Daniels,” analyst Troy Aikman said 

Van Pelt, egged on by Clark, a former Tigers safety, continued the LSU lovefest with everything but a couple of verses of “Calling Baton Rouge.” 

It began earlier in the day. The SEC Network’s popular “Paul Finebaum Show” warmed up for the main event with a guest appearance by LSU head coach Brian Kelly, whose interview almost sounded like another paid political promise. 

“If you want to be the next guy, that next potential Heisman Trophy winner, we can develop you here at LSU,” Kelly told Finebaum in advance of the LSU vs. LSU matchup. “Nothing speaks to it better than squaring off on ‘Monday Night Football.’ It’s just a great opportunity to show off two great young men.” 

His pitch might have reminded impressionable quarterback recruits that, while LSU doesn’t mind importing quarterbacks, Louisiana doesn’t appear to be running out of its endless supply of wide receivers anytime soon. 

It was Nick Saban himself who said a couple of weeks ago that “If you shake a tree in Louisiana, wide receivers fall out of it.” 

 And, sure enough, there was Bengals’ wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase, Burrow’s former running mate at LSU, demonstrating that secondaries still have not figured out how to defend that familiar deep-fade route that was such a recurring hit with Tigers fans during the national championship run. They did it twice in case anybody missed it the first time.

In short, it was a near-perfect night for an LSU fan base with an awkward rooting interest, as it were, torn between two Heismans.

Somebody mentioned to me Monday afternoon that they just hoped both offenses had their way and both quarterbacks showed off.

It was all of that.

Neither Burrow’s nor Daniels’ offenses ever punted. And there were no turnovers. None of the above. ESPN said that hadn’t happened in an NFL game since 1940.

LSU’s research turned up that it was the first time that two former Tigers have faced off as NFL starting quarterbacks since 1981 when Bert Jones (Baltimore Colts) faced the late David Woodley (Miami Dolphins).

But Burrows and Daniels made the most of it.

Burrows was 29 of 38 for 324 yards and three touchdown passes. That usually wins.

Yet Daniels set some sort of NFL rookie record by going 21-for-23 (the 93 percent completion rate apparently qualifying as the single-game record) while running for one touchdown and throwing for two.

It looked quite familiar to LSU fans as the Commanders are apparently going to let Daniels use his feet like he did in college.

He had run for three touchdowns before he threw his first for one in the NFL, and his first passing score — future trivia alert! — was to an offensive lineman, 320-pound Trent Scott.

Of course, just about anybody could score in this game.

Daniels was used to playing with no defense in college, or else he might have had a national championship trophy as Heisman bookend like Burrows.

Both were used to treating punters like Maytag repairman.

But if Tigers have had trouble cobbling together a defense in recent years, the quarterback pipeline is flowing.

Daniels passed the torch to Lake Charles’ Garrett Nussmeier and, thus far, the early returns are that he will be the NFL’s next Tiger up.

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Scooter Hobbs covers LSU athletics. Email him at scooter.hobbs@americanpress.com