I left my wife for a middle-aged grey-haired dude who says "boink and whap and boom" a lot and who likes kankles and turducken.

Well, at least for one night.

While my better half was sawing logs and dreaming of anything but video game football, I was getting my hands on Madden 09 with you-know-who on the cover.

When Brett Favre gets his own 24-hour news network on ESPN — call it ESPN4 or "The Cuatro" — I can't watch it. I won't watch it.

But, there he is on the cover. I can download another cover with him in his brand spankin' new Jets duds, but I'd rather just play the game.

And I do — for hours and hours and hours.

It's a Maddenoliday, after all. It's Maddenpalooza. It's Maddentastic.

I found myself Maddenausted by the end of the night, though.

It's a yearly tradition. It's like Christmas in August.

Stand in line for an hour, buy the game, take it home, check out the rosters, laugh at the dude with the worst overall rating — this year it is Bills' offensive lineman Demetrius Bell with a 54 — then play exhibition games until my thumbs ache and my eyes bleed.

This year means a little more. It's more festive because it's the 20th anniversary of the first game to don the chubby former Oakland Raiders coach.

The game has come a long way in 20 years.

No more indistinguishable sprites running into each other. The blob that was Vinny Testaverde on Madden '89 is, well, still a blob on Madden 09 — just a very well detailed one with as many polygons as Tampa Bay quarterbacks.

This year, Madden players have a cold, hard, concrete number to show how good, or how utterly inept, they are at the game.

It's called Madden IQ and it is a number based on how well you perform in the opening drills and during the games you play.

The middle-of-the-road, average-Joe IQ is 500. At the end of my night, I came in at an IQ of 472. In pro football player terms, that puts me roughly between Kyle Orton and Bruce Gradkowski.

I won't be bragging about that around the PS3.

But it's early. There are plenty of nights to get that IQ up to snuff.

One thing about Madden always remains the same: it's, well, Madden. It is entertaining. It plays smoothly and it is good for countless hours of fun.

No game is perfect. Every year I have the same gripes about Madden — and I don't mean his penchant to babble about nothing.

You'd think after 20 years, the makers would be able to program a decent fade pattern into the game, or make an offensive lineman with better than Stevie Wonder vision to block the dude right in front of him on a toss play.

But those are just minor quibbles.

Time to go work on my IQ — after I reintroduce myself to my wife.