The Large Hadron collider, and SEC college football?

Last week I attended the physics event at the University of Oregon--of course, about the Hadron collider in Europe. One of the questions was, "what is the worst thing that could happen at the LHC?". Jim Brau's response was to the point: if the collider doesn't work, that will be the worst thing.

I wonder if we got a taste of it. Apparently a "30-ton transformer used to power cooling stations for portions of the Large Hadron Collider's (LHC) gigantic superconducting magnets failed last Thursday, just one day after the LHC went online."

So, why the college football piece in the title of the post? Bizarre as it sounds, a headline that I read was "Auburn vs. LSU: SEC's early version of the Hadron Collider". It gets even stranger--the analysis employs more physics stuff:

The “Big Bang” you will hear rumble through the night air around 7:45 EST this Saturday will resonate from the epicenter of Jordan-Hare Stadium, not from Switzerland and France.
I’m not a physicist and I know very little about protons, particles, and kinetic energy but if they’re anything like these Tigers, collision is a very appropriate term to describe these two teams when they meet.

BTW, what is a hadron? Here is the explanation.

And, here is a rappin' explanation of the LHC :-)

College football is a professional sport. Admit it.

When coaches get paid millions of dollars, the following shouldn't surprise us, right?

From the LA Times:
The season opener means more than just a football game for USC. Before the Trojans play Virginia on Saturday, they must fly more than 2,500 miles across country on a charter flight.The airport in Charlottesville, Va., isn't large enough to accommodate the team's normal plane, so the USC entourage -- coaches, players, administrators and boosters -- will leave this afternoon in a pair of Boeing 757s.

How awful that must be for them. What if one plane has more caviar than the other? OMG!

From the IHT:
It used to be when Appalachian State ventured out of its own level of competition to play a major school, it meant only one thing.
"It was a money game," coach Jerry Moore said.
Like most schools playing in Division I college football's second tier, App State would collect a six-figure check to help pay the bills...

Well, the six figure is actually $600,000. Lowly Appalachian State gets that much money to play LSU, which means that LSU gets a lot more than that, right. Want an idea of how much money is involved? This commentary about the ESPN deal will give you a flavah of the moolah:
SEC’s staggering 15-year deal with ESPN that will reportedly pay the league about $2.25 billion. That deal, coupled with the 15-year deal the SEC has signed with CBS will give the league financial security for a long, long time.

BTW, those football players are supposedly students too. As a friend joked the other day, "I had no idea there was a real university--with buildings and classrooms--that has the same name as the football team!" The joke is on us :-(