If the price tag for a potential star quarterback has crossed the $10-million mark, then maybe it’s just as well LSU folded its cards in the bidding war for Bryce Underwood.

Oh, for the good old times, huh?

Back in the day you could get a very serviceable quarterback for a new Corvette, maybe a low-mileage Trans-Am.

It was sometimes awkward to slide a big sports car under the table, so to speak, but it seemed to work so long as the NCAA gumshoes weren’t snooping around.

Things have, well, they have changed a bit.

You probably heard that Underwood jilted LSU and has committed — for whatever that means these days — to play next year for his home state Michigan Wolverines.

He has that right, of course, reportedly nudged along by, well, some reports now have the final pot sweetener up more into the $12-14-million neighborhood.

Underwood must be really good, even though nobody has ever seen him play a down of college football.

Good for him.

Heartbreak for LSU, which thought it had him locked in for the last 11 months.

All this, over one player.

Flags might as well have been flying at half staff all over the LSU campus since the Underwood bomb dropped.

My guess, just a hunch, is that the Tigers will muddle through and still attempt to field a varsity next season. If one player can make or break your program, maybe you should take a shot at intramural flag football.

I guess you could say this was the moment that NCAA recruiting ran off the rails — except there no longer are any guard rails to run off. So let’s just say it was the day that college football recruiting jumped the shark.

10-Million American Dollars! Or maybe more!

A report on the website Front Office Sports traced the Michigan deal to Larry Ellison, the co-founder of Oracle, who’s reportedly worth $200 billion — yes, with a “B.” So it was spare change for him.

Champions Circle, the Michigan “collective,” — another new word on the recruiting scene — thanked Ellison for his support as being “instrumental in making this happen by providing Champions Circle with invaluable guidance and financial resources.”

Call me skeptical, but the latter input was likely more invaluable than the former.

And to think that when the name, image and likeness trifecta first appeared on the horizon, some of us were naïve enough to think, Oh, good, now some of these poor lads can strike a deal with the local Booger Doodle and get a couple of free hamburgers a week. Maybe a new suit from that off-campus men’s store.

Just be thankful, I guess, that Bill Gates dropped out of college.

Maybe it will be the shock to a broken system that will wake up the powers to be.

Probably not.

Meanwhile, did you ever think you’d hear a coach — this would be LSU’s Brian Kelly — try to put a positive spin on a disappointing development by explaining that “We’ve really put ourselves in a position now — and I’ll use this term loosely — to stay well under the ‘cap’ so we can be quite aggressive this year”?

He had to tiptoe around ever mentioning Underwood by name, of course. It is against an NCAA rule to mention the name of a potential recruit — the NCAA doesn’t have many rules it can still enforce, but by golly it’s apparently going to hang on to this one for dear life.

But Kelly was using the “cap” word just like NFL teams do when they’re dumping salaries to free up space to get more players.

So, if you’re following along, losing Underwood could be a good thing for LSU. Think of the millions the Tigers might have spent on him from their own collective that can now be spread out for more players.

Kelly is still not a big fan of the NCAA transfer portal, but said Monday, in response to a question about the financial windfall from Underwood’s defection as it relates to transfers, “We will be very aggressive in that area.

“We weren’t very aggressive in the transfer portal (last year). We put together a defensive line using minimal resources.”

Resources, meaning money. The Tigers notably lost out on a pair of transfer defensive linemen a year ago whose asking price got too high.

It sounds like that won’t be a problem this time.

“I’m excited,” Kelly said, “about what the roster can look like. I’m excited about what kind of football team we can put on the field. It’s going to be a fun couple of months.”

Really? It sure doesn’t sound like what any of these coaches signed up for.

Yet there are some who still wonder why Nick Saban got out of coaching.

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