Back in September I wasted like $5 on ESPN’s Fantasy Football League 2009 iPhone App. It’s about what I expected from a paid app. It’s pretty well designed, easy enough to use, and has functionality not available anywhere else. I can manage multiple leagues, make substitutions and pickup players, see my current matchup, and get push alerts for injuries, start vs bench projections, and hourly score updates.

It’s a solid app but as the season has worn on it has shown how stupid it is especially with alerts. Examples:

1. It’s Thursday night so the Jets are playing at Buffalo. Neither I or anyone I’m playing this week are starting players from either team so no one is scoring any points tonight, but I’m still getting hourly score updates of “you’re tied 0-0”
2. It’s Thursday and Matt Ryan, my starting quarterback (don’t ask), went out last Sunday. When will I get that injury push notification? Sunday a little before noon, maybe after the first set of games kick off. Very helpful!
3. Those notifications that tell you if a bench player is projected to outscore a starter come just as late and are just as useless.
4. Just like I get alerts before anyone on either team starts playing, I also get alerts after everyone on either team has finished playing. Maybe there are people out there that want to be reminded every hour about how the week went, but it’s flat out annoying to me.

Did you notice the ‘2009’ in the app title? I’m pretty sure that means next year I’m going to have to buy a completely new app (maybe). ESPN has been pretty good about making iPhone apps and iPhone-optimized sites. Didn’t they hear that you can make in-app updates and offer paid upgrades with iPhone OS 3.0? I don’t want to buy and download another app. I’d gladly pay to upgrade the bugs in this one.

I already paid, I might pay again, but there are still ads in the app. For some reason I thought paying for apps typically got rid of ads. Soon enough the ESPNFFL09 icon will move to my last page of apps or maybe get deleted altogether…