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App Review: NCAA Tournament On CBS Sports A Trusty Companion For March Madness

The CBS Sports mobile application offers year round, customizable coverage for sports fans. In March, it surfaces a dedicated NCAA Tournament section along with bracket games. This week, we examine those features specifically. An ad-supported free download, CBS Sports was developed by CBS Interactive in partnership with One Louder. It is available on iOS, Android, Windows and Blackberry platforms. This review was conducted on iPhone 5 version 8.2, with AT&T LTE service.

SHINING MOMENTS: The CBS Sports app offers a smooth interface that allows users to glide into a bracket game with ease. A group is simple to create, and once the details are shared, other players can log in and compete. This year, the app offers a full tournament bracket game and a round-by-round version. Due to a tight integration with the NCAA March Madness Live app, it takes only three taps to watch live games. Users are taken from a promo advertisement to a mobile webpage that asks them if they already have the app. Tapping "yes" opens March Madness Live and offers the live stream. Close-game alerts are pushed out to users from time to time offering a quick way to catch storybook endings. Scores are updated almost instantaneously. Bracket games are fun and simple. The app brings the user’s bracket to the top of the standings for easy viewing. It also breaks the leaderboard into rounds so that users can go back and see who won each round. Rules of the bracket are placed in a prominent position. Elsewhere in the NCAA Tournament section are scores, schedules, game recaps, live Twitter feeds, box scores and a gametracker feature. The gametracker is a simple second screen implementation including live play-by-play and an interactive shot chart.

FIRST-ROUND EXITS: Advertisements are the biggest downside of the experience. While some blurry banner ads sit below content, pop up ads take over the screen once or twice per session. Some ads are relevant, and others are not. The NCAA Tournament section lives midway down the app’s navigation menu, and this can be confusing. Bracket games live outside the NCAA Tournament section, and it takes a few taps in and out of those sections to get the hang of things. Live Twitter feeds are available for each game, but there is no clear path to create a tweet within the app. There is also no hashtag theme or instructions to be featured in the feed. An integration with TicketCity.com is presented within upcoming game information, but this leads to a mobile website outside of the app.

FINAL SCORE: Aside from unpolished advertising, there is nothing supremely wrong with the NCAA Tournament coverage on CBS Sports for iPhone. It is not super flashy, but it gets the job done. Creating a bracket is simple, as is following the tourney from game to game. Highlights of the app include quickly updated scores and a smooth integration to the live streams on the NCAA March Madness app. The experience deserves three stars. A little more flare and fewer pop-up ads would make this a four star product.

Amie Sheridan (amie.sheridan31@gmail.com) is a freelance writer in Philadelphia.
See Sheridan's previous App Review submissions for THE DAILY:

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