There is no better indicator of the popularity of fantasy football than the abundance of apps available for the iPhone. Whether you are getting ready for your fantasy draft or you just want to track your team during the season, the iPhone has you covered.
Of course, with so many options, knowing which app is right for you can be a little tricky.
Draft Kits
The Adrian Peterson of this year’s crop of draft kits is Fantasy Football Cheatsheet ’09. It is probably the only app you will need for your fantasy football draft. What really puts this $1.99 piece of art over the top is that it uses Rotoworld.com’s news and updates. This means you will always have the most up-to-date news.
I also recommend ESPN’s Fantasy Football Draft Kit 2009. This free app packs the most information, including news and analysis of more than 500 players, including their complete career stats, something you won’t find with any of the other fantasy apps. Unfortunately, you are not able to mark players as drafted, so this app is better suited to pre-draft.
Studs & Duds Fantasy Football Draft Kit ’09 is the most basic of them all, with no stats or player information included. The only advantage of this 99-cent app is that it allows you to base rankings on custom scoring, a feature that many fantasy fanatics will love.
Then there are the others. Draft Time 2009 Fantasy Football Cheat is ridiculously easy to use, but it does not have projected stats or injury information. It is the same price as Fantasy Football Cheatsheet ’09, and I can’t see any reason you would prefer it.
The same goes for iDraft Fantasy Football ’09. The $1.99 effort strikes me as a well-thought-out app, but not very pleasing to the eye. It does have a neat feature that allows you to easily view each team’s depth chart, but that’s about all it has going for it.
Tracking Stats
Of course, the draft is only a very small part of the fantasy football experience. Once the season begins, there are many apps that will allow you to track your fantasy teams progress on your iPhone.
The most ambitious of these is Fantasy Football Live, a $2.99 app that allows you to get live fantasy scoring for many leagues – including ESPN, CBS/NFL, Yahoo!, and Fanstar. The app also includes all the team management options, but unfortunately only for Fanstar leagues. This app has all kinds of information, but it’s a bit of a mess visually, and not very easy to use.
I prefer MyFantasyTeams, though the $3.99 app only works with Yahoo! leagues. Still, unlike Fantasy Football Live it looks great and is very easy to use. With this app you are able do everything you can on Yahoo!’s fantasy site, aside from drafting.
Also, CBS claims that its free Sports Mobile app will allow you to track your CBS fantasy football leagues. Currently, the app only supports fantasy baseball.
