The long wait is over. EA Sports has announced strong safety, defensive specialist, and two-time Super Bowl champion Troy Polamalu and the supersonic, acrobatic, rocket-powered wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald as their 2010 cover athletes for their flagship Madden series. They're no Brandon Jacobs (the best player in the history of the universe...because the NY Giants are my hometown team and the best ever) or anything, but they are suitable picks to head up this year's brand—consider that a polite golf-clap of some sort.

EA has also released in-game screenshots and character renders of the athletes, which, like the hamburgers in McDonald's commercials, will look a lot better than what will eventually show up when you plunk down 60 bucks for the retail copy this August. (We assume.) We're still fooling around with our Brett Favre edition of Madden, but if there's more than just a roster update to look forward to for this year's iteration, we'll gladly force the '09 into an overdue retirement.

What do you think of EA's picks?