Well folks, today is the day. After a long and boring summer of bad televised sports, the beginning of the end is at hand. Today EA Sports delivers the Madden NFL 11 demo to both Xbox Live (where it's available right now) and PlayStation Network (which will get it with the Store update later today). No longer do you have to pretend that soccer is an entertaining game and your days of watching US national volleyball matches against countries that can't even field an Olympic team are behind you. Football has returned, and there will be much rejoicing.

The demo will be a rematch of last year's AFC title game, featuring the Indianapolis Colts visiting the Meadowlands to face off against the New York Jets. The particular match-up is well suited to showing off all of the game's features, as the Colts are a pass-first team with a defense that gets after the passer and whose secondary blankets receivers. The Jets, meanwhile, like to run the ball first and have a defense built around stopping the run and gobbling up interceptions.

Honestly, at this point in the sports calendar, I'd take a demo that featured a game between the Detroit Lions and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, or any other insignifcant NFL teams. The key phrase here is "NFL teams". Sure, NCAA Football has been all well and good for a minor fix, but there's simply no comparison between snapping the ball to QB #7 and dropping back to throw a pass as Payton Manning. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got some downloading to do.