The Best NFL iPhone App Has No Scores or Stats? It’s True! [review]

The NFL season officially kicks off next week and serious football fans are already getting their iPhones and iPod touches all geared up with their favorite football apps. If you’ve spent any time looking for football apps in the App Store then you know there’s a lot to choose from. The trouble is, most of these apps are pretty much the same old thing. Schedules, scores, standings, stats, etc. Required information for sure, but c’mon, how many NFL score apps do we need?

Some apps try to stand out by adding gimmicks like games or even bikini models, but you’d probably be surprised if we told you that we found an essential NFL app that doesn’t contain a single score or stat. Believe us, we were just as surprised, and even more so to find out how incredibly entertaining this new app actually is. In fact, it has become one of our very favorite sports apps after only a couple days of using it. We are totally hooked, and we’re sure you will be, too.

Realtime Pro Football ’09 doesn’t mess with scores or stats because a hundred other iPhone apps already do that. What this app does do is give you commentary from hundreds of players, coaches, sports writers and bloggers, and all in realtime. That’s right, almost as soon as the content is created, it appears right on your iPhone or iPod touch. This gives you real football insight from the people closest to it. Realtime Pro Football ’09 makes a great companion app your sports app arsenal and one you don’t want to pass up. Read on to find out why this app has quickly become one of our favorite sports apps of all time.

Realtime Pro Football ’09 slurps content from Twitter that is generated by people in and around the league. The app taps the Twitter API thousands of times per hour to give you a realtime feed of comments generated by these people. What comes out in the app is a constantly updated stream of commentary that is a lot like any Twitter feed, often interesting, sometimes mundane, but always addictive. The best part about this app is that it doesn’t require you to have a Twitter account or even know anything about Twitter. It takes all the NFL relevant Tweets from Twitter and categorizes them for you.

The app offers four main categories of content to view: All, Teams, Blogs, and Press. The Teams section is where you want to be to follow only the Tweets from a particular team. The Blogs section aggregates content from Fansided.com, a collection of premium content from unofficial team blogs. The Press section contains a feed of Tweets from real sports commentators and journalists who give their professional take on what’s happening in the NFL. Any one of these features could stand on its own, but when you combine them together you get an unparalleled view of the NFL that cannot be found anywhere else. Not ESPN. Not Sport Center. Not any official NFL app. Only Realtime Pro Football ’09 can give you this crazy cool insight.

It would be nearly impossible to set up your own Twitter account to get this kind of view. You’d have to find all the players, coaches, assistants, media personalities and other NFL personnel who Tweet, then follow them. And forget about grouping them by team in Twitter, that’s almost impossible. Realtime Pro Football ’09 does all the dirty work for you. Trust us, this is a fantastic NFL app and well worth the $1.99 price in the App Store.

Earlier this week the NFL officially banned Twittering by any player, coach, assistant, or media person (and their extended support groups) during a game. This includes 90 minutes prior to the game and until the post-game media conferences are complete. Last year, you might follow the Tweets from a bored place kicker right on the sideline, but not this year. The interesting aspect about this new rule is that it covers media people as well. Does that include bloggers? What about Twitterers? The NFL cannot stop fans in the stadium from posting Tweets during a game, but it seems they would prefer it that way. The realtime web cannot be stopped, and certainly not by the NFL.

In any case, this new anti-Twitter rule means that you won’t get updates from players during the actual games, but you will hear plenty from them otherwise. Take this morning, for instance, in Realtime Pro Football ’09 we saw that the Indianapolis Colts had arrived in Cincinnati by bus for tonight’s preseason game against the Bengals. Colt’s defensive end, Raheem Brock, posted the following updates which I read less than a minute after he posted them.

I GOT OFF THE BUS YESTER DAY AND THIS BENGALS FAN SAYS”YOU KOWN YOUR IN THE JUNGLE RIGHT?”LOL.HOW BOUT WE WISH WE PLAYED YALL TWICE A YR LOL

Pretty entertaining stuff (unless you’re a Bengals fan), but then he followed a minute later with this post (apparently after learning how to turn off ALL CAPS):

I live in Cincy, Im a huge Colts fan, Bengals fans are hilarious. Playing them twice a year would be like have 3 bye weeks!

Following all the player smack-talk is a blast. Using this app is like having the players miked up when they’re not playing, giving fans completely new perspective from inside their heads. It’s really terrific for fans of the game, but for the Buffalo Bills, it might not be so good. Terrell Owens has never been one to keep his mouth shut, so it’ll be interesting to see if he can obey the NFL’s new anti-Twitter rule. Our prediction? He’s the first player to get fined for violating this rule.

Whether it’s T.O. or some other player getting slapped by the NFL for spouting off at the wrong time, one thing’s for sure, it’s gonna be fun as heck watching it all play out in realtime with Realtime Pro Football ’09, one of the best darn football apps for iPhone and iPod touch.

• Realtime Pro Football ’09 – $1.99 [app store]

 

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