Whether you’re a college fan, a pro fan or both, football season is finally just around the corner. That means you’ll be wanting to know what Android apps can accompany you to keep you updated during the season. This list should help you whether you want to manage your fantasy teams or just want live scoring updates from your favorite team. Let’s get started:
Fantasy apps
For all you fantasy players out there, the good news is that whichever site you choose to play on, they likely have an app for Android. I have highlighted the big three below:
ESPN Fantasy Football 2011
ESPN’s official fantasy app is a must for anyone who plays on their site. It’s a free app that allows you to manage your ESPN teams on-the-go. Users can manage rosters, receive real-time scoring updates, get push notifications for injuries and view ESPN’s fantasy analysis. [Market link]
NFL.com Fantasy Football
The official app from the National Football League that allows you to manage your fantasy football roster anywhere you are. With the NFL.com Fantasy Football app, you can create or join leagues, manage your rosters, monitor live scores, get up-to-the minute news and juggle trades. [Market link]
Yahoo Fantasy Football '11
Yahoo Fantasy Football '11 is a fantasy app for those who choose to play over on Yahoo. Like its counterparts, it’s free and allows Yahoo users to access their teams wherever they are to make adjustments as need be. Users can manage rosters, view live scores, track matchups and view player news. [Market link]
News, videos, and live scoring apps
Sportstap
Sportstap remains one of my favorite scoring apps because of its ease of use and simple UI. It provides scores for all major sports, college football and the NFL included. It also gives users news, stats, schedules, standings and alerts for your favorite teams. It also includes a widget that keeps you up-to-date on the scores from your favorite teams. [Market link]
ESPN ScoreCenter:
ESPN ScoreCenter is a fully featured live scoring app that will keep you up-to-date on all the games. There are a lot of scoring apps out there but one way this stands out is the UI. I mentioned above that I enjoy SportsTap because of how it looks but the recent update that ESPN ScoreCenter received makes this is a viable contender. It comes with 2 widgets (one for scores and one for videos) that allow you to see how your favorite teams are doing without having to open the app. [Market link]
NFL Football News:
The NFL Football News app is a great app that excels at doing one thing really well: providing me
with info about the NFL and the teams. The home screen of the app has five tabs at the top: News, AFC, NFC, Live and Favourite. The first tab is an aggregated list of the most recent news stories from a variety of sources. The AFC and NFC tabs allow you to narrow the news search by team, so if you would like to find quick headlines about your favorite team, that’s the easiest way. The Live tab brings you to a list of options and sources to choose from. You can view current standings, live scores and the current homepage from the likes of ESPN, Fox, Yahoo and NBC. Favourite displays the articles that you have marked as Favourite. As mentioned above, it’s a great app for reading and finding news articles, but not necessarily for tracking live scores. [Market link]
ESPN Bowl Bound:
For the devoted college fans, ESPN Bowl Bound is a must-have app. It’s a fantastic aggregation of
everything you will want to know about the NCAA. The app has a variety of options along the top: Home, News, Video, Twitter, Rankings, Bown Central, Scores, Teams, College Pick’em and Settings. News lists the most up-to-date headlines about the college game. In the Video tab, consumers can watch analysts predicting the remainder of the season, highlights of games already completed and some other videos including interviews. Twitter gives you a list of all relevant ESPN college analysts and their collective Tweets. The rest of the tabs are pretty self explanatory and will be much more important once the season starts and there are rankings to be debated. [Market link]
NFL Sunday Ticket:
If you’re a Sunday Ticket subscriber on DirecTV, you’ll want to get this app. It gives you access to the Sunday Ticket on-the-go right from your Android device. So if you’re out and about but don’t want to miss any of the action, make sure to sign up for the app, which costs either $9.99 a month if you sign up for five months, or $49.95 a month for just one, so it's a much better deal to sign up for longer. [Market link]
NFL Mobile (Verizon exclusive):
NFL Mobile is a Verizon-exclusive app. It gives you access to live game feeds for Thursday and Sunday night matchups as well as Live Red Zone and NFL Network feeds, in-game highlights and video on-demand. [Market link]
Are you ready for some football!?
