5 best iPhone apps for following the NFL
By Dan Kricke
The one thing that gets me personally excited for fall is the onset of football season. If you’re anything like me, you like to be armed with the perfect arsenal of apps to enjoy the season on as many levels as possible. Here are five of my favorites for the upcoming 2013 NFL season. And remember, you don’t have to use your credit card to get the funds for some of these apps into your iTunes account, you can always go to the Apple Store and pick up a gift card, plus you’ll get 1 percent Cash Back!
The official app of the NFL is full to the gills with multimedia features this season. Right out of the gate, customers get instant access to scores, custom team alerts, fantasy football info and video highlights from nfl.com. That’s not too shabby for starters, but Verizon customers can also get additional access for $4.99 a week or $29.99 for the entire season. For that low price Verizon users can get live streams of NFL Red Zone on Sundays, life broadcasts of games on Thursday, Sunday and Monday and 24/7 access to NFL Network. It’s pretty much everything a football fan could want.
The CBS Sports app has been one of my favorites for a long time running for every sport, but it does a particularly excellent job for football coverage. It features a full complement of scoreboard info along with personalized push notifications for your favorite teams so you don’t have to monitor every game obsessively when you’re out with friends. There’s also personalized team news sections and team schedules and standings for all sports. Overall, CBS Sports is a great catch all for the stats and info-obsessed fan.
ESPN’s flagship score app features similar scoreboards, new and standings as the CBS Sports app, but it also includes the expanded game analysis from ESPN personalities. Whether that’s a plus or not depends on how much you appreciate ESPN’s NFL coverage, but it certainly helps differentiate the app from a crowded field. ScoreCenter also features live integrated gamecasts and links to WatchESPN live streams.
Yahoo! Fantasy Sports – Fantasy Football
Keep your ESPN and NFL.com leagues, to me, Yahoo! is the king of fantasy football, and this app is the best way to experience your team on the go. It’s a little late for this now, but this year players could conduct their actual fantasy draft right on their phone in addition to the usual slate of mock draft options. The app also features live scoring during games and complete roster management controls. The Yahoo! Fantasy Football app is as complete a package as you’re likely to find in fantasy sports apps.
A big caveat with the Sunday Ticket app; you need DIRECTV to even have access to the app. But even more, you’ll need a subscription to NFL Sunday Ticket Max, which is an additional cost from the standard NFL Sunday Ticket package that Directv basically throws in for new subscribers these days. Having said all of that, this is a pretty sweet way to keep up with the weekend’s games. Live streaming video of all the games, instant highlights, fantasy football stat updates and big play alerts are baked right into the app.
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