LSU will announce its 2025 recruiting class Wednesday, with head coach Brian Kelly excited that 17 or so of them will enroll early and be available for spring practice.

Go ahead, decipher the list, study it once all the flipping and committing, the decommitting and ballcap-switching, is done. It’s a long-standing, if silly and useless, tradition.

There have been the usual highs and lows of this recruiting cycle, but the freshmen for the 2025 LSU class will be unveiled. Latest projections have it ranked nationally somewhere in the neighborhood of No. 6.

That’s all fine and good, probably harmless. But the key recruit for the 2025 season has been on campus for four years.

That would be quarterback Garrett Nussmeier, who has a decision to make about his future.

Let’s just say LSU desperately needs him to put off his NFL career for another year.

Wunderkind Bryce Underwood is not walking through that door — the nation’s top recruit is understandably running for the NIL cash grab at Michigan.

At least one potential Nussmeier successor, Rickie Collins, is walking out that door to the transfer portal.

Wishing him well is the classy move. Hard to believe he’d have been the answer anyway. Not if he couldn’t beat out AJ Swann for the backup role this year.

Fans got a cameo glimpse of Swann when Nussmeier left the Oklahoma game, his throwing arm limp, after a shoulder injury in the second quarter.

It wasn’t pretty with Swann— hard to believe he’d started 12 games for Vanderbilt before transferring. The body language looked like a player who’d never seen the field in college. They gave him a short gimme pass for completion, but then he called a time out LSU didn’t have — they flag you five yards for that — and looked lost throwing throwing two passes that were barely in the Baton Rouge area code.

Things looked grim for the home team.

It was about that time that Nussmeier, fresh out of X-ray, came trotting back out of the end zone tunnel, just like in the old black-and-white sports movies.

The crowd stirred as he threw a few warm-up passes on the sideline. But would he be able to play?

Head coach Brian Kelly talked it over with his quarterback.

“There was no option in my head,” Nussmeier said.

“I told him there was no way I was sitting out. There was no way that I was going to watch the rest of that game from the sideline and let those seniors go out without me.”

Sore wing and all, Nussmeier promptly completed his next 10 passes, including two TD bombs to Chris Hilton, even ran for two first downs, and LSU dominated the rest of the game to win in a 37-17 rout.

Safe to say LSU doesn’t even win the game without him. It’s the stuff legends are made of.

“Grit and toughness,” Kelly said. “What you want as a coach … buckle down and bite on the mouth guard and go out there and play … that’s what he did.

“That’s an easy tap out for most people, right? But that’s the kind of player he is. That’s the kind of competitor he is.”

Nussmeier may have had better games, but this was his Signature Game.

It’s being called his “Joe Burrow Moment,” with comparisons to the 2018 season  when Burrow got up off the deck after a cheap shot to strafe Central Florida in the Fiesta Bowl.

It set the stage for a national championship and a Heisman Trophy the following season.

Contrary to legend, however, it was already “Joe Burrow’s team” before that game.

And this was already “Nussmeier’s team” before Saturday’s theatrics. He just cemented it.

The big question for LSU is whether he takes ownership for another year.

Kelly promised an eventual national championship after the Oklahoma game but was somewhat fuzzy as to the exact arrival date. It’s even harder to predict a Heisman.

So there are no guarantees as Nussmeier ponders his future.

He did say that, regardless, he will play in LSU’s bowl game.

As for next year, he said right after the game that he hasn’t wanted to even think about it until the regular season is over.

“I can’t really tell you where I’m at right now,” he said. “I know that I love being here at LSU. I love this team and I love this school, this fan base.”

His tone sort of, kind of, maybe  sounded like he was leaning towards another year at LSU.

But who knows? He doesn’t owe LSU anything.

At least you can bet it will be a rational, measured decision. There won’t be any fast-talking agents and nefarious hangers-on whispering in his ear to muddy the waters.

Nussmeier’s dad, Doug, is of course a former Saints quarterback and longtime NFL and major college quarterback coach. He will be all the counsel and influence his son needs.

Either way, with no quarterback currently committed to this LSU class, Kelly no doubt will be scurrying through the transfer portal. He hopes it will be for a Nussmeier backup.

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