ESPN Tournament Challenge

Here’s the app every March Madness college basketball fanatic needs! ESPN Tournament Challenge by ESPN Inc is a great resource on the go for accessing instant data on your bracket picks, plus watch LIVE updates of each game as they happen using the ESPN Mobile Gamecast.

If you have ever joined a tournament pool at work or with your friends then you know how hooked you can become once the games begin. With most games going down to the final second, the only way you will really know where you stand in the competitive pool is to be glued to the TV set for the entire tournament, but most people can’t do that or course SO the next best thing is to download this FREE app.

 ESPN has it all pretty much covered. You can create up to 10 brackets within you ESPN account, follow the leader boards, watch the live updates to get the latest on each game as they happen, and track your progress within the private or public groups. The app menu is really easy to figure it out. Just starting it up for the first time before the tournament began, I was easily able to make all my picks on the bracket within the app. The bracket interface is really well done. I especially liked the smaller map graphic in the upper right corner of the screen that showed you exactly where you were in relation to the entire bracket. The developers made this feature possible by creating a small yellow box that would highlight each division as you moved to that point with your finger.

 The only minus was it was a bit unclear that you could actually tap on a game “in progress” within the bracket. Then once I found out this was a functionality, tapping the current games to get updates was a bit cumbersome and didn’t seem to work at first touch. After 2 or 3 taps though it seemed to work out and take me to the update page (a fix for this issue would be including a small button or text link that changes color, providing more interaction). Once in the update page, it shows you the current score and the amount of time left on the clock. Just hit the live button to refresh. This page also has a recent plays list, summary and stats.

 In the past I’ve always had to print out my bracket picks and carry them with me. This print-out never seemed to make it through the entire tournament. Whether it was lost, stolen, destroyed or left behind, this is one thing I don’t have to worry about any longer. Quite the primitive method now that I have this app…and an iPhone of course, March Madness will never be the same again.

Posted by Steve
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