For today’s TiPb Top 5, we are catering to all of our iPhone and iPod touch wielding readers who enjoy sports games and sports apps. Just like our other TiPb’s top 5 must-have posts, all of these applications are available in the App Store. For the full run down, follow us after the break!

Madden 2010

Today’s first game worth a mention is EA Mobile’s Madden 2010 and for good reason. The Madden football series is the #1 selling football game in the history of video games. It does not get any better than this, with crisp graphics, great controls, and amazing sound. If you are looking for the most detailed and intuitive football game on your iPhone, look no further.

• Dominate the field with rosters packed with your favorite NFL players from all 32 licensed teams.
• Play in authentic stadiums against life-like players on real NFL teams.
• Use touch controls to draw hot routes for passing plays, exclusive to Madden NFL 10.
• Play a quick one-off game, or try the robust season mode, which features in-depth trades, stats and individual player rewards.
• Detailed roster management gives you full control over depth charts, cross-team trading, and access to huge free agent pools.

Madden 2010 is available for $9.99. [iTunes Link]

FIFA 10

Can EA Mobile do any wrong when it comes to sports games? Just like with Madden, FIFA 10 provides you with top notch graphics, control, and sound. This is a must buy for any soccer fan.

• The only fully-licensed football game on the App Store – Real players, real teams & real leagues. No other football game can compete in terms of authentic rosters of players that mirror those of 2009/2010 teams across the globe.
• Includes the incredibly innovative Be-A-Pro mode from the console series – Create your own player and track his career through the lows of domestic football to the potential highs of European and international competition.
• Tournaments – 20 different licensed tournaments and cup competitions from around the world
• Unmatched range of passing – Shorts passes, lobs, long passes and through balls all available through an incredibly simple system of two-button controls
• Responsive shooting system – enabling the user to shoot from distance with accuracy as well taking the ball past defenders and finishing with that touch of class
• Full sound effects including Audio Commentary – Using the reknowned commentary from UK premier league announcer Clive Tilsley

FIFA 10 is available for $9.99. [iTunes Link]

Super K.O. Boxing 2

Next up we have one for all of you out there who are fans of Mike Tyson’s Punch Out on the original Nintendo Entertainment System, Super K.O. Boxing 2. Those of you looking for a simulation boxing game may want to skip this all out arcade action game but it is hard not to like this games great graphics and animation. Add the slick controls and you have an addicting arcade boxing game that is worth every penny.

• Each opponent has their own personality and moves
• Unleash devestating hook punches, dizzy knock downs and charged super punch combos to knock your opponent out.
• Circuit, versus, challenge, and endurance mode.

Super K.O. Boxing 2 is available for $4.99. [iTunes Link] [Free Demo]

ESPN Radio

Need a way to listen to your ESPN radio on the go? ESPN Radio is just the app for you. Listen to live, crystal-clear radio streams from more than 15 of your favorite ESPN radio stations from across the country directly on your iPhone/iPod via Wi-Fi or 3G. Even better, you can listen live while surfing the net, checking your email, etc… Since the audio stream runs off of Quicktime there is a background mode.

• LISTEN LIVE to live play-by-play broadcasts of your favorite college football games!
• LISTEN to more than 35 ESPN Radio podcasts right from your iPhone or iPod Touch, including the B.S. Report with Bill Simmons, Pardon The Interruption, Around The Horn and Fantasy Focus.
• LISTEN on demand to “SportsCenter” — updated every 20 minutes!
• LIVE scores and news feeds of your favorite NFL, MLB, NHL, college and professional sports teams.
• LIVE scores and news feeds of your favorite NFL, MLB, NHL, college and professional sports teams.
• TEXT CONNECT — send a message directly to the studio of your favorite ESPN Radio show.

ESPN Radio is available for $2.99. [iTunes Link]

Sportstap

Sportstap is the ideal app that enables you to get all of your scores and game details along directly on your phone. You can check out standings, team stats, player stats, and get updated scores and data every minute for all of your favorite teams. Sure there are a ton of other apps available that can do the same but not many of them send game update push notifications directly to your device. MLB, NFL, and NCAA Football. NHL, NBA, and NCAA Basketball are current sports that you can have alerts for. There are a few others sports apps that support push notifications but none of them pushed more timely than Sportstap. So if you like updates in real time, this is the way to go.

Sportstap is available for free. [iTunes Link]

Conclusion

There you have it, TiPb’s Top 5 Must-Have iPhone sports apps. Did we miss any of your favorites? Overlook any killer sports app? Drop us a comment and let us know your list!

Every week a few of us from team TiPb, bloggers and forum crew alike, will bring you our current favorite, funnest, most useful App Store apps, WebApps, jailbreak apps, even the occasional accessory, web site, or desktop app if the mood strikes us. As long as they’re iPhone (or iPod touch) related, they’re fair game.

So who’s on deck this week and what are our picks? Find out after the break!

Chad’s Pick: Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor.

This game is a blast! You play a spider who’s goal is to make it to the end of several levels from the lawn to closets. You can crawl anywhere on screen, jump with a swipe of you finger and create webs by creating a geometric pattern! The reason I like this game is that it is unique and fun! Catching bugs and finding the secret passages are a blast. The music is good, but gets a little repetitive. If you are in the mood for something different, give Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor a try! [$2.99 - iTunes link]

James’ Pick: SportsTap

SportsTap is a free application that allows you to keep up with the latest sports news and scores. The app also utilizes Push Notifications to alert you when your favorite team starts a game, every time there is a score update, and when the game is complete. A necessity for any sports fan who can’t watch the game! [Free - iTunes link]

Jeremy’s Pick: Zombies & Me

Electronic Arts has put together this fun little game that is perfect for “killing” a few minutes out of your day. At $.99 it really is a quality game that’s worth picking up. Did I mention you blow up zombies? [$0.99 - iTunes link]

Justin’s Pick: The Weather Channel

With hurricane season starting to kick into gear with the first named storm this is definitely an app I want to have handy. I’ve used this app for a while and it has come a long way since the early versions. You can view radar, watch videos, check severe weather alerts, and much more. The only thing missing that I wish it had, especially for hurricane season, is push alerts for severe weather updates. [Free - iTunes link]

Rene’s Pick: Reportage

What with Twitter once again going up and down faster than App Store rejection policies, I’ve found myself using Reportage to “tune in” to the people I follow so I can get updates in between the echoing silence of the great, not-even-whale-failing Twitter outages. The concept remains as specialized as it is killer, and if you want to read your way through different Twitter users, I’m hard pressed to think of a better paradigm than Reportage. [$3.99 - iTunes link]

Your Pick?

You’re part of team TiPb too, so what’s your pick? What app was your absolute fav last week? Let us — and everyone — know in the comments!

Every week a few of us from team TiPb, bloggers and forum crew alike, will bring you our current favorite, funnest, most useful App Store apps, WebApps, jailbreak apps, even the occasional accessory, web site, or desktop app if the mood strikes us. As long as they’re iPhone (or iPod touch) related, they’re fair game.

So who’s on deck this week and what are our picks? Find out after the break!

James’ Pick: Nike+ (3GS version)

I am an avid runner and used and iPod Nano with Nike+. Nike+ tracks your runs and syncs with an online website/community. Now with the iPhone 3GS and Nike+ built it, I have one less item to carry around when I travel. [Built in]

Justin’s Pick: SportsTap.

It’s been an app I’ve used for a while, but now with push it’s really useful. Makes it easy to follow the score of the Marlins. [Free - iTunes link]

Leanna’s Pick: Stoneloops of Jurassica!

My hand cramped and I nearly got a callous on my finger from playing Stoneloops so much. Enough said. [$0.99 on sale - iTunes link]

Matt’s Pick: Helios

For any cinematographer or photographer that does any serious work, this is a must. Helios helps you determine when and where the sun will be for any location on the Earth, as well as tell you the azimuth & the shadow length. Lastly, my favorite is the Inclinometer,which can be used to determine when the sun will come out from behind or go behind an object. The application has saved me a lot of time. And for more practical uses- you can use it (as I have) to find the parking space likely to have the most shade [$29.99 - iTunes link]

Rene’s Pick: Stoneloops of Jurassica

Sigh. I love TiPb’s community. I really do. But they recommend games that end up consuming vast portions of not only my life, but the lives of many staff members. Trails of gems snake their way towards a skeletal maw, and you fire more gems at them in an attempt to make matches, blow them up, and prevent them reaching their grim gateway. Combine 15 levels repeated, with additional colors each time, over several ecosystems (jungle, desert, glacier, etc.) and you have a lot of fun for your iPhone. Like the very best casual games, Stoneloops is quick, simple, and utterly addictive. And yeah, I totally got Leanna hooked too! [$0.99 on sale - iTunes link]

Your Pick?

You’re part of team TiPb too, so what’s your pick? What app was your absolute fav last week? Let us — and everyone — know in the comments!

Ahh, sports. The thrill of victory, the agony of defeat. If you are old enough, you probably remember the “agony of defeat” guy – painful on more than one level (for him, and for you if you are old enough to know what I’m talking about). I love me some sports, and thankfully there are some great sports apps for the iPhone. Two of my favorites are freebies – Sportacular and SportsTap. Which one has the edge? Who comes out on top as being more competitive and “sportier?”  Who hits the shot at the buzzer FTW?! Check out the App v. App after the break!

How Do They Compare?

Sportacular

I will say up front that I carry a little bit of bias here. I’ve been using Sportacular for quite a while now and it’s become a personal favorite of mine. Brought to us for free via the App Store by Jeff Hamilton, Sportacular is packed with useful features for the sports enthusiast while still maintaining a simple, clean interface.

Sportacular offers regular updates to scores, team standings, stats, and news covering several of the major professional and collegiate sports. Updates come every 30 seconds so you know what’s going on as it happens. The major sports that are covered are MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL, MLS, PGA, LPGA, and NCAA football and basketball. Season and game stats are now available for MLB, NFL, NBA, and the NHL.

It gets even better – Sportacular provides access to league and conference standings, the NCAA Top 25 updated daily, team schedules, NHL scoring and penalty details, NBA latest plays, and even BCS standings. There are other user features available for the sports diehard. If you are into fantasy sports and need to keep track of your favorite teams and players, Sportacular provides a means of creating custom groups for tracking teams and players so you can make important decisions for your fantasy team. Sportacular is now also part of the Citizen Sports network for even MORE access to all things sporty!

Having so many features and tools are just half the battle. The other half is won with a good user interface. Along the bottom of the screen you will find Scores, Standings, Schedules, Stats and More. All are self-explanatory, and More gives you access to News, a Featured Product (as I write this, my current Featured Product is a 49ers shower curtain on sale at Amazon.com – woohoo!), the Sportacular Blog for updates about the app, the list of Sportacular-related web apps, and App Info. 

For me, ease of use and having access to updated sports information that I want with a clean, attractive, and efficient interface wins the day. If you don’t have Sportacular already, I highly recommend it. 

SportsTap

The other favorite sports app on my iPhone is SportsTap by Mobile1Sports, LLC. Like Sportacular, it provides access to scores and stats for the major sports but also goes a bit further by offering even more: MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL, NCAA, NASCAR, Formula One, IndyCar, AFL, CFL, PGA, LPGA, ATP, WTA, MLS, and top futbol leagues from around the world. If sheer number of sports alone is used to determine a winner here, then SportsTap would come out on top. However, it’s much more than how many sports a sports app provides access to – it’s HOW the information is delivered.

In addition to scores and stats for all the aforementioned sports and leagues, SportsTap also provides detailed box scores, in-depth team and player statistics, season statistics, and even league transactions for many of the leagues. The information can still be considered “real time”, but is updated slightly less frequently than Sportacular – 60 second vs. 30 second updates.

I do like the main screen for SportsTap. It is very iPhone-esque with icons for each of the sports along with notifications in the upper right-hand corner of each icon for any new news items or events. The interface for SportsTap is also pretty clean, but I think it lacks the same intuitiveness that Sportacular offers. For example, to return to the home screen, you tap the SportsTap icon in the upper right-hand corner of whichever screen you happen to be in at the time. There is also a tiny “Home” icon in the lower left corner of the screen. Instead, it would be nice if there were “back” arrows to return to the previous screen rather than have to start from the Home screen again. The devil is truly in the details.

To SportsTap’s credit, I do like the “Feedback” option on the Home screen. From here, you can contact the developer for questions or comments. Although well-intentioned, it’s a shame that a Feedback icon takes up space on the Home screen because, really, how often will you provide feedback?

Like Sportacular, SportsTap also offers the option for setting up Favorites to track your favorite teams, regardless of sport or league. I also give SportsTap the edge for providing more detail for upcoming games – not only can you access the spread and see who is favored, but scrolling down reveals the past history between the two competing teams and a very detailed game preview.

Conclusion

It’s truly hard to go wrong with either Sportacular or SportsTap if you are a sports fan and want all your sports goodness on the fly, conveniently on your iPhone. Given that they are both free and take up little memory space, it’s not a tough decision to make to keep them both on your iPhone. However, this IS App v. App, after all, and THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE! So, even though it offers fewer sports by focusing on the more prominent professional and collegiate sports, I have to give the nod to Sportacular as the winner here. The simple, clean, and efficient interface and ease of use makes Sportacular a more enjoyable app, in my opinion. But hey, don’t just take my word for it. Try them both out and tell us what YOU think!

Sportacular Rating

SportsTap Rating