You really have to wonder what some of the old-time LSU players would have thought about opening the season in Las Vegas against a storied program like Southern Cal.

Back in the day, so to speak, it was customary to grunt and sweat through August — twice a day, no less — so they could swear on a stack of salt tablets that the team’s focus was solely on that opener with UTEP or some such.

Can’t take anybody lightly, you know. Never mind that, in reality, they were just hitting a few fungoes before the season really started.

That’s no way to welcome fans back after a long, hot offseason of bickering and wondering what’s in store for the varsity.

You think the Tigers of yore wouldn’t have looked forward to a Las Vegas trip as a reward for their August toil? More importantly, perhaps, against an opponent they had heard of?

Excuse me. I know I’ve ranted about this before. Don’t mean to beat a dead horse. But in these uncertain times for our great but troubled nation, it is just too important for the common good to ignore it.

So one more time: it should be mandatory to open the season with a game like this, preferably at a neutral site with plenty of upscale tourist traps.

But forget the locale — you know, airlines had to add non-stop Baton Rouge-to-Vegas flights to handle the fan interest this year — even though traveling is the preferred way to ring in the new season.

LSU and USC have the right idea.

The Tigers have long embraced the philosophy of getting the season off with a bang — even if you’re not guaranteed a win.

LSU — for some reason — will still play Nicholls State at home next week.

But what if that rent-a-win was this week? What would it prove?

Could you then still play the traditional parlor game of running down the rest of the schedule secure that you’ve got the rest of the season figured out?

I don’t think so. You’d still be clueless.

The big question for LSU — and USC, for that matter — is how much improvement was made on two of the leakiest and most helpless defenses of a year ago?

Come Monday, LSU will know if hiring a whole new defensive staff was the quick answer.

You can ignore that it is a long and evolving season and assume you’ve got a pretty good handle on whether either one or both of these teams is a College Football Playoff contender.

So could somebody please explain to me why honest contests like this have fallen into such disfavor? Why in this new age of college football they’re supposedly on their last legs in favor of more rent-a-wins for openers?

The Trojans reportedly tried to get out of this game more than a year ago.

It made for delightfully juicy scuttlebutt that Trojans head coach Lincoln Riley, having fled the Oklahoma job for USC when word of the Sooners joining the SEC was fresh, was again trying to avoid the big-boy conference.

It was an easy segue to remember that his last Oklahoma tangle with the SEC was Joe Burrow 63, Sooners 28 in the 2019 Peach Bowl semifinal.

LSU has always relished the neutral season opener. It has become almost an assumption that the Tigers will open with a worthy opponent in a fancy stadium.

But even head coach Brian Kelly said he doesn’t sound like he’s enthralled with the tradition for the future.

He called it “still an appealing opener” and “two elite programs coming together” and “we were just too far down the road to make any changes.”

Kelly has also expressed at least mild interest in something like the trans-Atlantic game that Florida State and Georgia Tech traveled to Dublin, Ireland, to play last week.

But Kelly also said this week that, “Moving forward, we may or may not see something like this.”

Again, let’s beg the question: Why not?

What has changed?

If anything you’d think that the expanded 12-team playoff would make a real opener more appealing — easier to get on the CFP radar if you win, more wiggle room if you lose and need to make amends.

True, the SEC has ballooned to 16 teams — but the teams are still playing eight conference games.

If the league ever goes to a nine-game schedule, then maybe you’d understand it.

Until then it’s a hollow excuse.

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