BATON ROUGE — Rest assured that any place that dips into a shady Florida Rent-a-Tiger center for a random cat to stand in for its regal live mascot has already shown it has a fairly high tolerance for embarrassment.

So it should have come as no surprise that when LSU finally scored a touchdown to pull within 30 points of Alabama with 11 seconds remaining Saturday, fireworks exploded all rockety-red glare into a dreary night sky.

But, really? Bombs bursting in air? For this?

To LSU’s credit it resisted the urge for more celebratory fireworks when the Tigers made the extra point to further cut the margin to a mere 29 points, the final 42-13.

Who knows? Maybe it was worth roman candles and bottle rockets at the realization that head coach Brian Kelly has still had at least one touchdown in every game of his LSU tenure.

It was touch and go.

Why not crank up another laser light show? Bring on the drones. Students, please leave the goal posts alone when you rush the field.

Beyond that, well …

At least the pyrotechnics weren’t duds.

The Tigers — both the live loaner (named “Omar,” apparently) and the football team on the field — were monumental flops.

LSU should be embarrassed. The Tigers will be a long time living this one down.

They can blame the Omar the Tiger fiasco on Gov. Jeff Landry, who evidently thought he might pick up a few spare votes while throwing his political weight around in insisting on an unknown, inconsequential tiger’s attendance.

Omar, frankly, looked a little bored for what turned out to be no more than his five or six minutes of fame before leaving the stadium without comment. Your tax dollars at work.

The football Tigers looked wide awake — just lost, confused, hesitant, out of sorts, irritable, whatever, kind of deer-in-headlights.

Mostly they were out of position, especially on third downs where Bama converted on 10 of 13 like it was taking a stroll through the park.

Embarrassing? That’s humiliating.

This game had too much build-up to lay an egg this big. It was billed as a playoff elimination game with the adding enticement of sending Alabama into the hell hole of Death Valley.

The LSU fans held up their end of the bargain.

Their team, not so much.

Kelly spoke for the handful of faithful who stuck it out through the rain and mist — not to mention the other tens of thousands who fled the disaster  early — when he observed:

“If you’re watching the game, you’re like, ‘What did these guys do for two weeks?’ ”

Excellent question.

I was thinking it might have been some sort of fall break, perhaps a trip to the beach, maybe a Cancun or Gulf Shores or somewhere relaxing with tiny umbrellas in their Mai Tais.

It surely did not look like they wasted much time grunting or preparing for Alabama and their biggest game of the year.

“We have a scheme to stop the quarterback,” Kelly added.

Really?

A  Ponzi scheme, maybe.

They’d had two weeks since Texas A&M pulled a fast one and switched quarterbacks in the second half (legal in most states, I’m told), thereby instantly turning the Tigers into defensive mashed potatoes.

There was no such chicanery Saturday. LSU had to know about Bama’s Jalen Milroe, who ran for 185 yards and four touchdowns with little objection from LSU defenders.

Last year he ran for 155 yards and another four touchdowns against the Tigers. If you’re keeping score at home, that’s 340 yards rushing and eight TDs in two games. Saturday he threw for only 109 yards but … why bother when you run for touchdowns of 72, 39, 19 and 10 yards?

Milroe is a dynamic player, all the more so, apparently, when you wave purple and gold in front of him.

But his two destructions of LSU are the two biggest rushing games of his career.

So somebody can tackle him.

If there actually was a plan, maybe go back to the drawing board.

The Tigers’ offense was no help, of course, as they still can’t run the ball enough to take any pressure off of quarterback Garrett Nussmeier.

The Nuss Bus is suddenly off the rails, with three more turnovers — two picks and a lost fumble — to go with the three he had in the second half against Texas A&M.

The first two came just when it looked like LSU might get back in the game.

Kelly, as per his custom when explaining dumpster fires, took ownership of the belly-flop. Of course he did.                                                                                                      Even with paid participants, the transfer portal pretty well eliminates any coach’s urge to throw players under the bus.

“They had the right mindset coming into this game,” he said of                                                                                                                                                                 his team. “They were locked in. They were focused.”

Somehow, that makes it all the more disturbing.

Given the build-up, the optimism in the pregame tailgates, this has to go down as the worst loss in Kelly’s two-plus years.

At least the Marine Corps pregame fly-over with a pair of F/A 18 Super Hornets flanking a KC 130 was inspiring.

And — bright spot alert! — you can now be sure that, no matter the governor’s wayward wishes, the Omar the Tiger experiment was a one-off deal.