No, I am not a Hockey fan.

Ah, Football season. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways…

Cheesy lines from a poem aside, what kind of guy would I be without my weekly Sunday coma on the couch? There’s probably nothing I look forward to more all year (besides Thanksgiving) than the first week of NFL football. Sweatpants? Check. Stained t-shirt? Check. Slippers? Check. Pizza and snacks? double check. So, how excited was I when I found a little app by the name of SportsTap? Very – you could even say I was elated. Why wait for a game break when you can just tap the SportsTap icon and delve into the scores at your leisure? Enough PR, let’s get into it.

SportsTap is by far my weapon of choice for scores. I have tried other products such as ESPN ScoreCenter, but they can’t quite hold a candle to SportsTap. The application has a number of features that match and beat the competition: support for multiple sports (Tennis, Scoccer, Golf, NCAA, Racing, and many more), box scores, statistics (team and individual, among others), standings, news, photos, and so on. The application even has a feature called “LocalTap” that uses your location to load recent scores in a radius from 50, 100 or 200 miles. If only it included sports bars… To top it all off, the application is completely customizable – you can choose your favorite teams, turn on alerts, and customize the sports to display only those you are interested in. Buh-bye Nascar, CFL and Soccer!

I swear I'm not a Hockey fan!

With all of this customization and content, one might understand if SportsTap runs a little sluggish. In reality, the application is speedy and it very rarely (if at all) crashes. Whether it be on Wi-Fi, the 3g or the EDGE network, scores always manage to load with ease. Did I mention that there’s an automatic refresh and that, even if your phone goes to sleep, the next time you unlock it the information will be updated? Pretty slick, slick. The only thing that doesn’t always load are the advertisements. Located at the top of the screen when you navigate into a league or game, they’re but a nuisance and don’t interfere with any functionality.

With all of these upsides, it’s hard to view this app as less-than-perfect. Some people may not like the advertisements, some people may want more sports added (ahem, Bowling, anyone?), and some people may not like that it’s plain-looking (ESPN ScoreCenter is bright and in-your-face, but what else would you expect from ESPN?). The only thing that frustrates me – and all of the scoreboard-type apps are guilty of this (believe me, I’ve tried them) – is that every once in a while the scores won’t update. Time will expire or a home run will be hit and the app remains the same for up to a minute or two. This is very, very frustrating but unavoidable. If you find an scoreboard app that doesn’t do this, please please let me know. SportsTap is an otherwise wonderfully executed, comprehensive and streamlined application. Oh yeah, and it’s free!

*Sigh* We all know what happened next...