Whether or not you agree with any combat the US has engaged in as of late, you have to feel for the troops. Their girlfriends. Their kids. Their wives. Their husbands. Their parents.

Being thousands of miles away from your family is tough as it is; trying to avoid death every day while being thousands of miles away from your family is unbearable.

As such, the fine folks at EA Sports have given Madden 2010 to a submarine crew heading out on deployment before its release date on Aug. 14 in an effort to make the time go by a fraction faster.

Tailgate365 has the details:

… for a few Tailgate365.com members, that day comes after they leave on deployment with no connection to the outside world.  See, these guys live on a submarine for months at a time, protecting our rights.  Rights to keep on playing Madden till our fingers hurt and our eyes cry for sleep. These sailors, with not much to do, literally under water, spend all of their time eating, working, sleeping and of course, gaming.

But thanks to EA Sports and their commitment to our troops, they will get underway with a copy of the latest version of Madden.

According to Mr. Gaines over at Sports By Brooks, video games and the like are precisely the type of things that bring a sense of normalcy to an abnormal time in these people’s lives.

I just hope they have an Xbox on board to play the game.

Every year, a new Madden game is released. And every year, at least two things happen. 1) I purchase the game and then don’t get the full value out of it because I end up not playing it enough. And 2) several athletes complain about the fact that they are not rated high enough in the video game.

This year, that athlete is T.J. Houshmandzadeh. “Teej” (if you will — and you will, because I’m not writing Houshmandazdeh 30 times in the next several hundred words) is so cheesed off, in fact, that he’s going to boycott the game until EA Sports fixes his rating, according to an interview he had with everyone’s fav shockjock, Colin Cowherd.

“I understand I averaged 10 yards a catch, but it’s the offense, not me. I’m not playing Madden no more until they get my rating right. … I used to be the best in the world at Madden. I’m going to miss not playing it, but until they do me right, I’m not playing it any more.”

How did they do Teej an injustice? Well, they ranked him — *gasp* — a 91 overall. What exactly does that mean? Well, it means he’s just as good as Terrell Owens.

And not as good as the following people: Larry Fitzgerald, Andre Johnson, Steve Smith, Randy Moss, Reggie Wayne, Anquan Boldin, Roddy White, Brandon Marshall, Calvin Johnson and TO. Which, for the most part, seems pretty fair.

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