SPOTLIGHTm

PlusMo College Football for iPhone

What is it?

Puts college football scoreboards, news, gamecasts (text-based), pictures, and polls in your hand via iPhone. PlusMo has a suite of applications like these for major sports that help keep sports fans up to date with their favorite sports and teams.

How much does it cost?

Free.

Who is it good for?

College football fans who want to stay up their teams and all the day’s games on the go.

Summary

PlusMo’s utilitarian application provides pretty much all you need to be up to date on the latest scores and schedules in college football, but doesn’t has limited stats and some of the navigation just doesn’t make sense. However, there’s a lot missing and a significant number of bugs that make you feel like the application could be so much better.  Occasionally, PlusMo will lag for a bit when loading schedules and toggling screens. Though has significantly more bugs than most Apple approved applications, it’s still preferable to having to load a page through Safari.

The application is filled with pictures, modest game casts (not play by play), and even smack talk, but the real value is the scoreboard and polls, which both generally work well. Again, there are a good number of bugs, so this will likely be a love/hate relationship (convenience/consistency).

Keep it or Delete it?

Delete it.

We’re not exaggerating, PlusMo College Football has a ton of bugs, but when it works, it’s actually pretty convenient for scores, but not a whole lot else. Best of all, it’s free, unlike a lot of sports applications out there. With all the bugs on PlusMo, there’s definitely space for someone to swoop in and build a better mouse trap with this one, but hopefully some solid QA  and an update will make this app more stable and useful one day.

Don't see to many of these on approved apps

You’re able to choose teams to track, view polls (we don’t really understand what “Standings” is, because it doesn’t immediately show teams by conference), check out news, scores, and schedules.

Another weird thing about the application is that all the times are set to the East Coast (perhaps it’s the alleged college football “East Coast bias”). So if you’re a Washington Huskies fan and the Dawgs are playing at 7:15PM Pacific, it will say that the game is at 10:15PM. It seems a little silly that the times don’t adjust according to where you are.

With just a few taps, you can see who’s playing who, what the score is, and hypothetically see what the big plays were. One of the application’s interactive features is “Smack Talk” where you can make comments in real-time as the game goes on, all of which are filled with Internet hatred for other teams. You’re also able to give teams a “Thumbs Up” or “Thumbs Down” to show who the PlusMo users are cheering for. Both of these functions are pretty cool, but they’re also two of the most buggy. If they work, they could end up being pretty great.

Beyond that, it’s all pretty standard fare. Something that feels like it’s really lacking is any sort of statistics area for teams that you designate as “My Team.” You’d like to see some stats like “Leading Rusher,” “Most Points Scored,” etc. Stats like that could make you the coolest guy in the bar when someone asks for some information about a team.

PlusMo lists team rosters by position, with the names in no particular order (a depth chart or starting each position by starter would be nice), which doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense. The rosters are also missing any kind of in-depth information regarding where the player went to high school or again, any statistics. It’s just a list of names, which feels like it’s just really missing a lot.

Outside of the statistical omissions and lack of organization, there is some stuff to like outside of the scoreboards. One of which is the gamecast-like play by play for games. This has to be one of the coolest features of the application because it’s immediately obvious how this would be useful.

No longer do people have to go to games, wondering what is happening at the other big game that they skipped to attend this one because they don’t have access to a computer or the patience to deal with a slow loading WAP site. On these individual game pages, you’ll see some of the depth that feels like it’s missing from some of the other pages and it’s one thing that PlusMo does very well.

There’s a lot of convenience and a lot of frustration with the PlusMo College Football application. For college football fans, this application could prove to be useful for the scoreboard and real-time game information alone, as that’s where it really shines. However, the bugs and lack of depth when it comes to information makes it difficult for us to proclaim this as the end-all, only college football application you need to take you through the BCS National Championship.  It gets the job done, but just by enough.