Scan the LSU football roster and it might seem puzzling when you get to starting quarterback Garrett Nussmeier.

It’s the part about: Hometown — Lake Charles.

Say what? Barbe High, you’re thinking? Maybe LaGrange? Or St. Louis Catholic? Typo, perhaps?

None of the usual suspects apply.

It turns out Nussmeier is, most recently, from Marcus High School in the Dallas area (Flower Mound), where he was a four-star recruit and the 2020 Texas Class 6A midseason player of the year.

But he was born in Lake Charles in February of 2002 and it was he who chose to list Lake Charles as his hometown of record on the LSU roster.

He certainly had plenty of options, what with a fluid childhood that would put an Army brat to shame. While chasing his father’s coaching career, the Nussmeier famil moved 12 times, most recently this year to Philadelphia where Doug Nussmeier is the quarterbacks coach of the NFL Eagles.

“But Lake Charles was really the only constant place in my life that stayed with me as we moved from place to place,” Garrett said. “That’s why I call it home.”

His mother, the former Christi Hebert, grew up in Lake Charles but was in the New Orleans Saints dance line, the Saintsations, when she met, and later married, Doug, the team’s backup quarterback during the mid-1990s.

Doug, who won the then-Division I-AA version of the Heisman Trophy, the Walter Payton Award, as a quarterback at the University of Idaho, had finished his playing career by the time Garrett was born.

But the seemingly never-ending journey was just beginning, starting with coaching stints with the CFL British Columbia Lions and Ottawa Rough Riders.

The Nussmeier clan certainly wasn’t settling down.

“But we were always coming back to Lake Charles,” Garrett said. “Every Christmas, Easter, other holidays, sometimes in the summer, with my grandparents.”

Mostly it was just hanging out with a big family, with his grandparents, Melanie “Doodle” and the late Danny “Poppy” Hebert, holding court.

Poppy worked cattle on the property in Sweetlake, Garrett said, and it was a kid’s dream “tagging along, riding horses around the pasture, checking coyote traps, doing some fishing, shooting guns, feeding the cattle, those kind of things.”

His Lake Charles bona fides are solid enough that he can list Darrell’s as his go-to po’ boy spot when he’s in town.

But he didn’t know that he is the first Lake Charles “native” to start at quarterback for LSU since 1899.

That would have been Ivan H. Schwing, about whom little is documented except that he was also the LSU team captain that year and played the next year for a head coach, Edmond Chavanne, who was born in Lake Charles.

More Trivial Pursuit: Schwing is surely the only LSU quarterback to ever play against his high school alma mater, as the Tigers in 1899 played what was called an exhibition game against Lake Charles High and won 48-0 (in Lake Charles, no less).

“That’s pretty cool,” Nussmeier said. “I can honestly say I did not know that.”

Nussmeier ended up at LSU even though it’s one of the few places his dad hasn’t coached.

Since escaping Canada, Doug has coached at Michigan State, Fresno State, Washington, Alabama, Michigan and Florida in college. The other NFL stops were the St. Louis Rams, Dallas Cowboys and Los Angeles Chargers before the Eagles.

Former Alabama head coach Nick Saban said at SEC Media Days this year that he remembered a young Garrett occasionally being around the Tide’s practices during Doug’s Bama tenure (2012-2013).

“He’s grown some since then,” Saban said.

Even at 10 years old, however, he was there wallowing in the confetti for the Tide’s 2012 national championship, even got to touch the Bowl Championship Series trophy.

He was a budding teenager by the time the family hit Gainesville, Florida, got to work some after practices with dad.

“I remember one of the worst workouts I ever had,” he said. “I was throwing terrible. Dad was yelling at me. I was using a composite ball. Learning experience — after that I got a leather ball.”

He’ll have whatever he wants at his disposal at LSU this season.

Given his nomadic upbringing, you’d think Nussmeier would be well trained for the easy temptations of college football’s age of the transfer portal.

But Nussmeier, a redshirt junior now in his fourth year at LSU, has shown rare patience. He’s had to wait three years on his chance, the last two behind Heisman Trophy winner Jayden Daniels.

“I think it was just my trust in God,” Nussmeier said. “I felt like He brought me here for a reason out of high school.

“I didn’t want to jump ship and find a better situation … just keep my head down and get better.

“Ultimately, I love LSU, I love Louisiana. I lover the responsibility of representing the state and the university. That means a lot.

“This is my home. I feel like this is where I’m from.”