Recently I mentioned that SB Nation had worked out a new sponsorship deal. Well, we're back at it with another one. This is in fact a sponsored post, but once again it's for something that actually relates to what we do here at the SB Nation football sites. Recently the higher-ups worked out a deal with the folks at Sprint to help promote the NFL Mobile Live options on their cell phones. If you have Sprint and have Internet capabilities, you sould in fact already have NFL Mobile Live at your fingertips.
Before I go any further, I want to make sure everybody knows we are not going to be hawking everything under the sun here at Niners Nation. I once saw a television commercial for a used car dealer who said, "I will club a baby seal to get you a good deal." Just know that we are not going to turn into that. Sponsors are necessary in this day and age, but thankfully our marketing folks have done their research and found things that clearly speak to our readers. If you have any specific issues with our sponsored posts, please feel free to let me know in the comments or via email (ninersnation@gmail.com). At the very least we can have cordial discourse about the issue.
Now, in order to allow us to fully explore the proverbial studio space, Sprint was kind enough to provide the NFL bloggers with the new PalmPre. Prior to this phone I had never had one of the newer smart phones, so the learning curve has certainly taken me some time. Nonetheless, I finally got a chance to explore the NFL Mobile Live options tonight and came away duly impressed (hopefully that doesn't sound as cheesy reading it as it does in my head).
I have class Monday nights so I have to find "alternative means" for viewing Monday Night Football. My class let out early while the game was getting particularly insane in the 4th quarter. It was just after Ted Ginn's touchdown catch. For those that don't know, NFL Mobile Live allows you to listen to home or away radio broadcasts for every game being played in a given weekend. So, I plugged in my earphones and listened to the last few minutes of a pretty crazy 4th quarter. I've listened to sporting events on the radio before so it's not like this was entirely new. However, being able to listen to the game as I walked home was still pretty sweet.
The radio feature is certainly cool, but I found one little wrinkle on the site especially cool for Niners Nation in particular. When you go into NFL Mobile Live you can click on a button that says "My Team." When you get in there you are able to set the team to the 49ers fairly quickly. Upon doing that you're taken to a list of sites that includes the 49ers home page and NFL.com. More importantly? The third link down says SB Nation. Yes, my friends, Niners Nation is a part of NFL Mobile Live on Sprint. At the moment, the information is a bit dated and I'm working to get that corrected. Also, I can't remember who, but in one of our threads last week somebody actually pointed this out, so it sounds like folks are finding things relatively easily.
After the jump I look at some fantasy football features and the phone itself...
Beyond listening to the games and the 49ers specific content, NFL Mobile Live provides some solid fantasy football information features with which I've only just begun to play around. If you click on the Fantasy button, you have several options. They've cut a deal with ESPN where you can log into your ESPN fantasy league. I don't have an ESPN league so that's not the most useful feature. However, my favorite fantasy feature is the Player Tracker. I can enter in any players I want and get current stats on them. I'm heading back east for a wedding in a couple weekends, so it's safe to say I'll be checking my fantasy info fairly frequently.
As for the phone itself? Well, in terms of the "smartness" of it I'm pleased with it. Given my low budget phones to date it's not that hard to impress me, so take that with a grain of salt. However, the operating system seems to work well and I have found it fairly easy to get used to. The biggest drawback, in my opinion, is that the battery is pretty bad. However, it's my understanding that given the Internet use it's not surprising it gets drained so quickly.
At this point, I won't have a ton of super promotion posts with this. One thing you should most definitely know about is the opportunity Sprint is providing to win Super Bowl tickets. They have something called their "Sprint Can't-Miss Plays" for each week. You vote on your favorite play (out of three) and can then register for a chance to win Super Bowl tickets. It's safe to say we won't see 49ers highlights among the three options this week. I'll post a link when those are up for voting.