GAINESVILLE, Fla. — OK, so it turns out LSU wasn’t really the No. 5 team in the country.

The Tigers were never going to make the College Football Playoff and certainly weren’t going to go undefeated.

Not exactly breaking news.

Let’s be honest here. I think we all suspected that those were pipe dreams well before it all came tumbling down in a sweltering Swamp Saturday afternoon.

Kinda fun while it lasted, wasn’t it?

It wasn’t for lack of effort.

Now that Florida 27, LSU 19 has burst the bubble, LSU can get on with the season without having to apologize for or explain away their ranking.

Bottom line, for all the surprising September eye-openers, the Tigers still look pretty much like what we thought they were in the summer — a team that is probably a year away from really getting accepted into that kind of toney neighborhood, the one they barged into after beating two top ten teams in the first three games.

They were still getting sideways, askance glances from college football’s upper-crust neighbors in the poll.

But Saturday actually wasn’t that much different from the Auburn game, the crown jewel in LSU’s unexpected rise in the polls.

The Tigers and Gators went at it hammer and tong for all of a blistering afternoon.

One or two key plays was the difference in losing to Florida just as it was the difference in beating Auburn.

Either team could have won either game.

Still, Saturday, from the time LSU fumbled away the chance to go up double-digits on its second possession of the game, Florida looked like the better team — particularly at the line of scrimmage where these affairs are normally sorted out.

I’d give LSU a little credit that it took the Gators a full 58 and a half minutes to finally prove it on the scoreboard.

So it’s not like the Tigers were totally exposed as frauds. Nothing to be embarrassed about.

It turned out to be a typical LSU-Florida game, brutal from start to finish, with the game coming down to the final minute in an old-fashioned battle for field position.

Nothing has really changed for LSU. It was going to happen sometime.

If you follow the ebbs and flows of college football, you know the Tigers still have a chance to pull off another shocker this week when No. 2 Georgia visits and they still have no prayer in Havana of ever upsetting Alabama at the end of a key stretch that also includes Mississippi State. But it wasn’t like there hadn’t been warnings that there was a shelf life on the lofty rankings (LSU fell to No. 13 in the AP poll, where the Tigers should feel more at home).

The canary in the mine shaft should have come with the way Louisiana Tech spent much of the night draped around quarterback Joe Burrow. News flash — Florida had far better pass rushers and made Joe Burrow’s life miserable, as much with the eight hurries as the five sacks.

LSU has been patching the offensive line together all season, coming with some creative work-arounds. It caught up with them Saturday, and that grabbed the headlines. But there was no putting this loss one group. Coordinator Dave Aranda’s defense controlled for long periods, but still gave up 215 yards rushing — unheard of for LSU — and had trouble getting the key stops when they really needed them. But the woes in the offensive line stood out.

So Joe Burrow was battered and beat up. One thing that he wasn’t, contrary to Gator locker room banter, was “cracked.” For now, let’s give Florida safety Brad Stewart the benefit of youthful exuberance after his late pick-six of Burrow sealed the deal.

Maybe it was too hard to resist taking a dig at his home state’s expense (he’s from New Orleans, McDonough 35). But afterwards he told reporters that the Gators’ defense “knew that Burrow would crack in the clutch.” No harm done, really.

To the victors go the taunts. But please explain when Burrow cracked. Burrows was bent, folded and mutilated by the Gators most of the day. They almost cracked him in half a few times, but if Burrow ever cracked personally, he sure hid it well. And it sure took a while. Stewart should give himself some credit for a good play — as Burrow did for him while pointing out that he saw the tight coverage but, well, times were desperate, you have to take some chances in that situation.

His first interception of the year shook him up so badly that on the next series, the situation even more desperate, he threw his best pass of the year, a 23-yarder between three Gator defenders to Derrick Dillon on fourth and 18. And never mind that Burrow should never have had that chance.

Surely, the Florida coaches will tell young Stewart that the prudent thing to do on his pick six would have been to take a knee, where LSU would never have seen the ball again instead of getting a Hail Mary’s chance still eight points down. Burrow will be fine.