10 Must Have Android Apps for Every Football Fan

10 Must Have Android Apps for Every Football Fan

Incorporating technology into every nook and cranny of our lives is the goal of most motivated and busy person today. We want to be able to use technology to get the most out of all the other things we care about. The same goes for sports and specifically football. Whether it’s the NFL or college football, the technology bum rush is in full effect.

But with technology comes choices. And in many cases there are waaaay too many choices. When that happens, it comes down to using a mix of tried and true brands and trial and error to determine what’s best for you.

It has become more and more commonplace for people to carry smartphones and if you’ve ever been to a football game, you are surrounded by them. Smartphone technology has come so far that you can integrate so much of your life into that little device. I have always been a technology guy; so earlier in the week when my new Samsung Galaxy S3 came in the mail, one thing I wanted to do was be sure that I was getting the best bang for my application buck. For me, when it comes to apps, less is more and I try and get as much out of as few apps as I can.

One comment on some apps that didn’t make my list. One criteria I used for this list is they have to be apps I use on a regular basis, and they must be free. I am sure there are lots of tremendous paid apps out there for football fans, but I’ve never really felt like I needed to extend beyond my core of free apps to get what I need.

A few apps that missed the cut but are still excellent are-

NFL Sunday Ticket-A specialty app for folks who have the NFL Sunday Ticket Package on DirecTV. If you have it, get the free app, and you’ll love all it’ll do.

WatchESPN-If your cable provider offers you this service, this app is a must have for sure. Being able to watch live college football games on your phone or tablet is a great service and as long as you qualify it’s free.

NFL Game Rewind-Another app that requires a subscription service, but if you are willing to pay for it, you’ll be very happy with it.

Various team specific sites-No matter who you root for; there are apps out there for you. All you have to do is search the Google Play store for your favorite and then start downloading. Some are free and some are not, and some are great and others are a scam, but from wallpapers and clock widgets to message boards and inside information, whichever football teams tickle your fancy, there’s an app for that.

But here is my list of my 10 must have football apps. Enjoy! Oh, and either comment below or find me on Twitter @nfldraftboard and tell me about your favorite football apps.

Yahoo Fantasy Football

Yahoo Fantasy Football-Yahoo Fantasy Football is my app of choice for management of my fantasy football team only because for the last dozen years or so it’s the only fantasy football service I have used for the past dozen years or so. I am sure that the NFL.com app is excellent along with ESPN and CBS Sports. But the Yahoo interface has improved so much and you can really manage your entire team right from the app. I can’t remember the last time I actually went to my fantasy football page on a computer. There’s just no need other than to check messages. Having used this app for several seasons on multiple operating systems I can say that Yahoo has done a really good job getting it streamlined and super functional. I have also tried several of those fantasy football managers that are not linked to Yahoo, but I have never found one I like more than the original.

Price-Free

Symbaloo

Symbaloo-If Flipboard is a bit fancier than what you had in mind for accessing your favorite football information that is available on the internet, but you still want a mix of user created and pre-generated content in your favorite content areas, in a little more basic format I suggest you try Symbaloo. It’s much more than just a way to organize Internet bookmarks as you can build your own categories and add and remove content as you wish to fit your needs. I have 9 folders of sites on my Symbaloo that cover a nearly every major football website even down to individual team sites. It does not allow for linking of personalized social content, but where Flipboard is more detailed and you don’t want to overload with links, Symbaloo is made for massive amounts so fill those folders up.

Price-Free

Statsheet NFL

NFL by StatSheet-If having quick access to enormous amounts of information about various NFL teams is what you are craving, this is the app for you. According to their description on the Google Play Store, it has upwards of 2 billion stats available. I like it because I am all about organization and getting to the team you want is simple, and the each page is laid out nice and clean. The colors on the page are very good and it is very easy to read although I could do without the grass behind the team names which makes reading them a challenge.

You can not only get previous statistics, but it updates with live play by play stats, current rosters of all the NFL teams, as well as links to team news. They even take it so far as to have a Statsmack section you can link off of your team’s page, and post some stat smack on another team. It’s very much a nerd fight, but I’m on board for sure.

Price-Free

Pro Football Weekly Fantasy Football

Pro Football Weekly Fantasy Football-If you were able to see my record on the picture I put up for the Yahoo fantasy football app, then you understand I am not very good at fantasy football. I like my fantasies with Mila Kunis, not Cam Newton. But I play, and I give the bulk of my success to this app. Pro Football Weekly has done a great job combining breaking fantasy news, weekly updated player rankings, video features, player analysis, and an entire section dedicated to Tweets related to fantasy football. It’s a very comprehensive site and what I have found is when it comes to fantasy football, find one site you trust and stick with it, so you don’t end up over thinking the entire processes because of information from multiple sources. Easy to navigate, stable and a very clean interface all combine for a great all around app.

Price-Free

NFL '12

NFL ’12-This is the official app of the league and NFL.com. when you open the app, it starts you off on the current week in a listing of all of that weekend’s matchups. Prior to the start of the game you can set yourself alerts, as well as see breakdowns and matchups of a given game. During the game all results and stats are updated in real time, and after the game full recaps including video and audio media. You can also order game tickets via an online link, shop for NFL gear, has a section for the NFL sponsored fantasy football and you can customize your experience around your favorite team.

Price-Free

NBC Sports LiveExtra

NBC Sports Live Extra-The scope of this app when it comes to football is a little limited, but for me personally it’s a really useful product. NBC has rights to all Notre Dame Fighting Irish football games, so in a sense this app is a one stop shop for all this Golden Dome. You can watch games live if you are too busy watching SEC football on your TV. You can get all the Notre Dame news conferences, can go back after the game and get highlights and oh by the way the entire app runs in a video format and it’s very simple to use and runs very smoothly. You do have to weed through some advertisements, but the trade off is the app is free and the information especially for a college football and NFL draft guy like me is valuable.

Another cool feature of the app is that any video you watch you can share on comment on via Twitter or Facebook with only a couple of button pushes. With one of my rules for a great app being integration, that gets high marks with me.

Price-Free

Flipboard

Flipboard-Flipboard isn’t a football app in the truest sense, but if you are a football fan who loves to access tons of information in a single source that you can customize, Flipboard is a must have. You can build your Flipboard with whatever sort of content you want from links to websites, social media links to things like Twitter and Facebook, RSS feeds, as well as linking your own personal accounts so you can access it all from a single source. They sell themselves as a social magazine and that’s a very true assessment. You literally “flip” through the pages, viewing headlines from your favorite websites or social media pages, and you can simply tap and read, then return and continue to flip. I am all about being able to do more with less, and Flipboard makes my life easier. You can build your board from scratch, use Flipboard picks, or a mix of the 2. Another great feature for Android is you can add a flipboard widget that updates in real time and just makes the experience even better.

Price-Free

ESPN College Football

ESPN College Football-This app is the king if college football is what you are after. In previous seasons this was the app they called the ESPN Bowl Bound app, but now it is so much more. The layout of the app is really clean and beautiful and while it’s more of a processor hog, for most newer devices it won’t be a problem. There are sections dedicated to top stories, scores, streaming content, video, News, rankings, standing, teams, bowl bound, watchespn, as well as a college fantasy section. You can also link up your ESPN account if you have one to enhance the experience. The video section in particular is impressive. You can go game by game for a given week and watch clips of every big play from that game. It’s an app you can spend hours on even when games aren’t on.

Price-Free

ESPN Score Center

ESPN Score Center-ESPN Score Center is sort of like the ESPN college and NFL home pages crammed into one app. It’s a good app though, allowing you to customize your home screen with all your favorite teams, but also has a section called the lead that contains sports headlines and breaking news, a pane dedicated just for ads, an NFL pane, an NCAA football pane, and a pane dedicated to finding more ESPN apps. You can also access pre-game and highlight videos and set alerts for all your favorite games. In terms of design the app is pretty comprehensive works really well, and is a nice, fluid running app. I probably don’t use this app as much as I should, but one really nice addition for Android is it allows you to add widgets to your home screen for scores or video, and I use them much more than I go into the actual app.

Price-Free

CBS Sports

CBS Sports-CBS Sports is a massive sports app that has a scope well beyond college and NFL football. Each section is broken into articles and videos that cover everything from previews and breakdowns, fantasy information, and of course scores and schedules for every game along with stats. This really is a massive app and probably as inclusive as any on this list. One thing I like is the articles load in a very simple text format so they are easy to read and don’t bog down your phone. Another nice feature is the content on the app is a combination of things you’d find on the CBS Sports site, and some content just for the app.

Price-Free