So here’s the deal, odd as it may seem for an LSU team that is making its 19th trip to the College World Series in pursuit of a seventh national championship.

Certainly LSU is no stranger to this thing — the hoopla, the pageantry, hard-core friendliness, the innocent charm of Omaha.

But Omaha actually knows the Tigers — these particular Tigers, at least — better than these particular Tigers know any sort of Omaha.

That’s not always the case. Usually isn’t.

There was a time when the Tigers might as well have kept time shares there on the edge of downtown near TD Ameritrade Stadium — except, wait — it’s now been corporately morphed into Charles Schwab Field since the Tigers were last there in 2017.

For that matter, LSU made its Omaha bones and collected all of its national titles across town at delightful old Rosenblatt Stadium, named after the mayor who lured the event to Omaha in the first place (1950).

The point is, if you’re a college baseball player, Omaha is where you want to be.

Fine. Chase the dream.

But if you’re an LSU Tiger, Omaha is where you’re supposed to be in June. Some would say better be.

No pressure.

Yet, expected as it is, routine as it can become for this program, this trip is different for LSU.

It’s been a minute.

It’s the first time in Omaha for the Tigers since 2017 when they were runnersup to Florida. That’s too long, the longest drought, in fact, since Skip Bertman broke the ice in 1986.

Maybe for some schools a five-year absence would be understandable — four years, actually, since Covid wiped out the 2020 party.

But it goes beyond LSU coming to consider the trip their birthright.

That’s understandable.

But here’s your reminder: Omaha locals love them some College World Series, support it with shameless, midwestern mom-and-pop zeal. For an LSU Invasion to their CWS, however, the good Omahans go over the top. They revel and celebrate and wallow around in it, mostly while overindulging with their temporary LSU best friends.

They tend to cheer for the Tigers with some unexplained gusto.

It probably goes back to when Bertman was not only winning most every year, but was Omaha’s biggest goodwill ambassador. The good residents also took a liking to the strange delicacies the bayou visitors could whip up in those odd contraptions in the parking lot. They generally brought plenty of beer, too.

That aspect of LSU in Omaha should survive the Tigers’ prolonged absence. Shoot, many of the LSU fans took to going even on years when the team was left behind.

Like riding a gumbo pot.

But it’s all hearsay to the current LSU players. They have no idea what they’re wading into.

The Tigers have only one player who has ever been in the stadium before this week.

And reliable relief pitcher Riley Cooper arrived at LSU (with head coach Jay Johnson) from Arizona, where he threw one Omaha inning in the Wildcats’ 2021 CWS opener against Vanderbilt.

Evidently he had a good time. It was a scoreless inning.

Johnson went twice while coaching at Arizona.

That’s nice. Just know that it will be a far different experience this time.

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