The Essential Smartphone Apps For The NFL Season

     As the summer winds down and fall starts to peak through the curtains, there are a few things that all NFL fans know. First, and most importantly, Football - college and pro - are around the corner. In fact, as I write this I am watching the Oakland Raiders treat this preseason game against Dallas like their lives depend on it. It’s like Al Davis has turned into Kim Jong Il and the Raiders don’t want to get publicly humiliated.

     But if you are like me, occasionally on your sacred sabbath I like to call NFL Sunday, your significant other may have a honey-do list for you. This could entail taking the kids to the movies, grocery shopping, painting, or watching a re-run of Real Housewives of (fill in the city). So, it’s important that you have a game plan of a technological sort. Unfortunately, I can’t cover all smartphones or tablets that are on the market, but I would at least like to bring some apps to your attention that may temporarily ease the pain of missing a quarter or two of the game. Any more than two quarters missed is not acceptable. 

    So, let’s address those who have an iPhone first. One of the best perks of having the NFL Sunday Ticket is the little known add-on called Direct TV SuperFan. If you have the Sunday Ticket and an iPhone, iPod or iPad, you will love the fact that you can live stream the NFL games on any of those devices as long as you have a wi-fi signal.  The good news is that most places you go (restaurants, coffee shops, gyms etc) have free wi-fi. However, let’s say you are on the road and have no wi-fi. What can you do? I recommend picking up one of those Verizon mi-fi devices. With a battery life of 10 hours plus, you can grab the wi-fi signal off that device, and stream from your iPhone, iPad, and iPod. Another plus, is you can grab a mi-fi and use it on a pay-as-you-go basis. Just be careful of your data bandwidth limits. This is available in the app store.

Another app for the iPhone is the ESPN ScoreCenter App.     It’s free on the iPhone but the ESPN ScoreCenter XL iPad app sports a $4.99 price tag but takes advantage of the extra screen real estate. The premium features for the iPad is video highlights, live play-by-play, live, in-game statistics, and scoring summaries.  Follow your favorite team with dedicated video, news and analysis. This is available in the app store. If you are a BlackBerry guy, the ESPN app is free and available in App World or on the mobile home page of ESPN.  But a very close second is theScore iPad app.

    Another app for the BlackBerry is actually team specific. The Washington Redskins Mobile App is a pretty incredible web app. The reason I, personally, like this app is that I like having all my team’s information in one spot. If I want to read the blog, it’s right there. If I want to check their schedule (preseason and regular season) I don’t want to have to find good news about my team. Just give it to me in one place. This app does that. So let’s hope we see this app for all the NFL teams. This app can be picked up in a number of places but I got it here.

    For the Fantasy Football Player you have choices galore but none seem to be released quite yet. Yahoo will soon release theirs on most smartphone platforms. We will see if ESPN follows suit shortly their after. Last year, ESPN had a very popular iPhone app last year and expect that to extend to the iPad as well.

    Designed specifically for BlackBerry smartphones, we make it simple and easy to follow sports in real-time. Coverage includes: MLB, PGA, NFL, NCAAF, CFL, NASCAR, NHL, NBA, MLS and EPL, with more to come. BlackBerry devices, including the Storm 2 and Bold 9700 models. And best of all, it's FREE! You can go to the Score Page and grab it.

For your Droid Lovers, Android has a pretty cool app called NFL: Football News. If you need to stay current with news on your team or fantasy team, this is a pretty good app to keep you updated on the changes that happen daily especially Sunday morning at 11:30 when you find out Drew Brees has the flu and won’t start. You can find this app in the Android Market.

Whatever your phone choice, the best start for a die hard football - heck any fan - is to have a smartphone.  The big three - iPhone, BlackBerry, and Android - all offer excellent choices so make sure you have one that gets you a good internet browsing experience.