What If FanHouse Had Its Very Own Large Hadron Collider?

By all accounts, Wednesday is a landmark day in the world of science, if not mankind as a whole, as it marks the unveiling of the Large Hadron Collider. The Hadron Collider is apparently (and bear in mind that this is being explained to you by a sports fan) a 17-mile NASCAR track loop that will accelerate particles to such high velocities that when they collide, the resulting collision will mimic the Big Bang ... or, if you're one of those people who wears tin-foil hats and hand-prints your own weekly newsletter, a black hole that will rip open the very fabric of the universe quicker than CC Sabathia trying to squeeze into a pair of Lindsay Lohan's jorts.

Anyway, in honor of the Hadron Collider, we here at FanHouse decided to conduct a little scientific experiment of our own and posed the following question to our bloggers: If you could place any two athletes into the Large Hadron Collider, who would they be, and what would be the result of their collision?

The answers are below. And while these proposed experiments might not garner any Nobel Peace Prizes, they would answer the age-old riddle: Just what would happen if John Kruk and John Daly were somehow able to sire an offspring? (Actually, don't sit on that mental image for too long. Your universe will collapse.)

Enrico Campitelli (NFL) "A WAG and ... a WAG!"
"Forget Tom Brady and Tony Romo. Colliding them together would just give you a 2006 version of Donovan McNabb -- gimpy leg included. Why not collide their lovely girlfriends, instead? Clearly, if you smash Gisele Bundchen and Jessica Simpson together at astonishing speeds the result -- while likely NSFW -- would yield the two most popular ... stories to ever grace the blogosphere."

Jon "J.P." Press (NHL) "A Side of Sidney, but Please Hold the Sidney"
"Alex Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby -- you'd have the best player and personality in the NHL ... and have a whole Sidney Crosby left over."

Matt Moore (NBA) "Pandazelles Frickin' Rule"
"Al Harrington and Caron Butler. Size, agility, and the ability to hit from anywhere on the freaking floor. He'd be like this giant stretched panda that laughed at everything and was simultaneously graceful like a gazelle, yet awkward like Napoleon Dynamite. Also, he would be able to defend MechaGodzilla."

Mark Hasty (NCAA Football) "Two Grahams of Juice"
"I'd mash Texas Tech's Graham Harrell with Illinois' Juice Williams and create a weapon the Air Force can only dream about. It could strike anywhere, and it would be so fast it could turn out the lights and be in bed before the room got dark ... As for coaches, Ed Orgeron and Lou Holtz. You won't win many games, but the press conferences should be a blast."

Pat Lackey (MLB) "Congressional Searing"
"Well, that's easy. I'd smash Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens and hope that it just makes them go away, though an annoying Armageddon of back pimples, shrinkage, and weak denials would likely result ... Otherwise, I'd pick Randy Johnson and Chris Kaman. I don't know what would come out, but damn it would be ugly."

Mike Cardillo (Soccer) "Diego Maradona, Basically"
"Wayne Rooney and Ronaldo, and not Cristiano Ronaldo, but the original 'fat' Ronaldo from Brasil. When the two strikers collide it would probably create some kind of Brando-esque, ginger-haired, blob-like monster with tiny little Tyranosauras arms that owns a penchant for smoking, fighting, track suits, kidney pie and perhaps even transvestite hookers."

This Suit Is Not Black (Sports Announcing) "Microphone Check"
"Michael Kay and Joe Buck. And then I'd kill whatever they made."

Matt Snyder (NFL) "Even Better Than Renaldo Nehemiah"
"Usain Bolt and Christian Okoye. You'd wind up with the best football player ever. Line him up at QB if you want, no one's stopping him."

Tom Ziller (NBA) "Bounce With Me, Wee-Man"
"Michael Sweetney and Earl Boykins. After the first ricochet, it'd be like tossing a Superball into a blender."

Craig Calcaterra (MLB) "We're All Just Dinner Anyway"
"The Hadron Collider has been hypothesized by some to pose a risk of turning two otherwise harmless particles into black holes that could, theoretically speaking, devour the Earth. As such, we can propose putting whoever we want in there, but the reality of the situation is that the result might look very much like Prince Fielder and CC Sabathia."

Adam Gretz (NFL) "Who Cares? Black and Gold, Baby!"
"Deion Sanders and Todd Pinkston. Because at least then we'd know there would be no chance of the two particles colliding into one another, there would be no black hole, and the universe would continue on as normal, thereby allowing the Pittsburgh Steelers to stake their rightful claim as kings of the universe."

John Radcliff (NCAA Football) "But Could They Even Find the Lab?"
"Greg Robinson and Charlie Weis would collide together to form the perfect coach to run your once proud program into the ground while never feeling the warmth of the coaching hot seat. Weis brings the 'perceived' know-how to coach up average players, and Robinson brings the Baghdad Bob positive attitude that the answers are always just around the next turn."

Nathan Fowler (Other Sports) "Dr. Moreau's Sports Paradise"
"Michael Phelps and Barbaro -- because Barbaro desperately needed some new limbs, and a centaur with flippers would be totally awesome."

Shane Bacon (Golf and MLB) "What's the Sound of One Lard Clapping?"
"John Daly and John Kruk. Not sure what would come out but I have a suspicion it might have something to do with a Philly cheesesteak and a cold Miller Lite."

Adam Jacobi (NFL and MLB) "It's Like Salvia in a Blender"
"Propulsion is of our highest concern, so we'll need to implement a Jet engine: Brett Favre. The other component is none other than the worst World Series MVP in history (sorry, Larry Sherry) -- David Eckstein.

"Getting the two halves at top speed would be no problem. 'Brett Favre' (or, as molecular biologists know it, Havingfunoutthereite--you think Brett Favre's not Having Fun Out There?) would generate incredible amounts of energy with his playground smile, and the rest of the necessary speed would be his natural revulsion toward a naked Peter King with a bottle of champagne and a bucket of strawberries. (PK would be placed be at the beginning of the track.)

"Meanwhile, we would put a bat in Eckstein's hands and have him hit a high chopper toward short; this happens quite often in his natural state to begin with. As with greyhounds at the race track, we'll just place a first base on a rail and have him sprint after it for the requisite 17 miles.

"The resulting collision would be a brilliant, blinding, bright white explosion, and the resultant cloud of subatomic Competitorons, Hustlons, and Caucasioids would be enough to make every athlete, not just those two, 'really want to win.' Further, it would accomplish the wholly admirable task of vaporizing Brett Favre and David Eckstein in one fell swoop, and everyone who's ever watched ESPN in the last six years would really, really appreciate that."