There’s something unseemly about an athlete-driven app that doesn’t seem to have any of the athlete’s personality. That assumes that I can deduce what sort of person New York Yankees pitcher CC Sabathia is when the cameras aren’t rolling, I suppose, but I’d have to guess he’s much more interesting than his app would have you believe.
CC Sabathia – Official App is essentially centered around four main components – a Stats tab, News tab, Videos tab and a tab devoted to his PitCCh In charity. The Stats tab is about as bare bones as you can imagine. Just a page filled with some general CC pitching stats that wouldn’t be news to Yankees fans and wouldn’t make sense to non-baseball fans. The PitCCh In information is rather sparse, but contains information about community events that CC is taking part in on behalf of his charity. Unfortunately, it suffers from the same design flaws that the news tab suffers from.
Both the News and PitCCh In tabs feature information that expands outward into what are essentially in-app web browser pages. Rather than display the information in the easy-to-read app format, a text is truncated and a sort of in-app web browser displays the information.
This information is not only much more difficult to read for the user, but it makes the app look lazy, like its only a poor shell for the CC Sabathia web page. In contrast to an app like the Chad Ochocinco app, which has every bit of information organized within the app’s layout, the CC app looks ugly and cumbersome.
Where clicking on a news blurb in the CC app should lead you to a seamless news story on his latest start or charitable endeavor, instead a web page slowly loads within the app. It takes too long, and is too difficult to read without serious adjustment to make a positive impact.
The Videos section of the CC Sabathia app is probably its strongest feature. The candid shots of CC talking about his hometown give the app a personal touch that is lacking throughout the rest of it. While most of this app seems like a very calculated attempt to make CC Sabathia Web 2.0 friendly, the videos show the person behind this persona.
Unless you’re a diehard fan of the Yankees or CC, this is an easy app to skip. The lack of personality displayed here is disappointing, although Yankee fans should get a kick out of some of the videos. Chad Ochocinco might need to teach a course on how to make a fan-friendly app if these generic athlete apps keep popping up.
