Just in time for the Dallas Cowboys’ opening of a new $1.12 billion stadium – creatively named Cowboys Stadium – EffectiV Internet Solutions has released iPhone apps for the Minnesota Vikings, New England Patriots and Notre Dame Fighting Irish, among others. For better and worse, Cowboys Football Live follows the same format as others in the series.
The best part of this app is its live news feed, which includes local news from Blogging the Boys, Cowboys Gab and the Dallas Morning News. The feed also picks up national coverage from ESPN, Sports Illustrated and NFL.com.
While not a mind blowing feature, the news aggregator is incredibly convenient and curates from a good selection of sources. The stories all link to the source websites, which is a bit of a bummer because you have to enlarge them to read anything.The app also includes scores from around the league that link to the NFL.com page for stats, game previews and other goodies.
The rest of Cowboys Football Live is filled with curious decisions. There is a multimedia section that consists of videos from ESPN.com and CBS Sports Mobile, but as of this writing not one of the videos has anything to do with the Cowboys. There is no reason for this app to include MLB scores, for instance.
Similarly, the oddly titled ‘Top News’ section is simply a link to the Cowboys’ ESPN team page. This is a nice thing to have, but the name doesn’t make sense.
Overall, Cowboys Football Live is a decent app. You’re really paying $1.99 for the news feed. There are apps devoted to live scoring that do it better. Everything else is just filler.
