It’s hard to believe LSU and Southern Cal have only played each other twice in their storied histories.

The series, which resumes with a Sunday night game, is knotted 1-1. It only seems like the Trojans and Tigers are always butting heads over something or another.

Crazier still, LSU fans of a certain age (old) talk far more about the Tigers’ 1979 loss — with head-shaking awe tempered by bitterness — than they do the 23-3 LSU victory in Los Angeles, just a couple of months after the L.A. Coliseum hosted the 1984 Olympics.

They’ll tell you that heartbreaker in 1979 — with an average LSU team against one of the choicest collections of future NFL Hall of Famers ever assembled on a college campus — might still have been Tiger Stadium’s finest, loudest and perhaps most intoxicating three hours.

And LSU coach Charlie McClendon went to his grave believing his Tigers were robbed.

It wasn’t so much that a face mask penalty that kept the Trojans last-minute winning drive alive was chintzy at best. No, it was that, at worst, it should been offsetting penalties as the whole right side of the USC offensive line clearly jumped the gun on the snap count.

The Tiger Stadium crowd never quit roaring, even after the final horn sounded on USC 17, LSU 12. It was the game that prompted offensive lineman Brad Budde, one of the Trojans’ future Hall of Famers, to famously say afterwards, “This place makes Notre Dame look like ‘Romper Room.’”

That was McClendon’s final year as LSU’s coach. As a parting gift, perhaps, after the season he was picked to coach the Hula Bowl all-star game in Hawaii.

Those games are generally somewhat loose and casual affairs, but during pre-game warmups, McClendon noticed one of the officials seemed to be avoiding him.

Then he figured out why. It was the same Pac-10 official who’d called the face mask penalty but overlooked the false start in September.

Charlie Mac, adorned with a floral lei, let the zebra have it one more time, somewhat playfully (somewhat not) before they hugged and called a truce for the all-star game.

Still, maybe the USC-LSU game that gets talked about the most is the one that never quite got played.

That was after the 2003 season, during the old Bowl Championship Series days, when LSU beat Oklahoma for the BCS title, but had to split the national championship with the Trojans after USC beat Michigan in the Rose Bowl and claimed The Associated Press poll version.

It should have been LSU-USC for the undisputed championship, and fans clamored for one.

So where were the amateur matchmakers last year?

Yes, let’s be honest, the LSU-USC game that will be played Sunday in Las Vegas really should have been played last season … anywhere, somewhere.

But Vegas would have been a fine spot, fitting even, given that the scoreboard would have been rolling like a dizzy slot machine.

Maybe it will be this weekend.

But last year LSU had the best offense in the country and USC wasn’t far behind. You’d have had the current Heisman Trophy winner, Jayden Daniels, and previous year’s, Caleb Williams.

Those two video game cheat codes were also the top two picks in last spring’s NFL draft.

Adding to the potential hijinks, LSU and USC had two of the more hapless, lost and confused defenses in major college football.

Can you imagine what havoc Daniels and Williams would have wreaked on those two defenses? Statistically USC was even worse than LSU, which finished No. 105 nationally in total defense. The Trojans were No. 116.

Fans might have required smelling salts. Cirque du Soleil would have been relegated to a warmup act.

Maybe the potential is still there.

Even now, if these two teams look in the mirror, they might see the other staring back.

Both got a head start on replacing their Heisman winners when Daniels and Williams both opted out of bowl games.

Both replacements, LSU’s Garrett Nussmeier and USC’s Miller Moss, were bowl MVPs in their first career starts and both of the redshirt juniors are more traditional drop-back quarterbacks.

“Moss is not the same as Caleb Williams,” LSU head coach Brian Kelly said Monday. “He’s not a free-lance player. So is Garrett Nussmeier. He’s not Jayden Daniels.”

So we know what they’re not, even though both expect to have efficient offenses.

Both teams also fired their defensive coordinators and totally revamped the staffs, along with bringing in a ton of transfers

The key to the game will be which team’s defense is not what it was a year ago.

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