NCAA Tournament March Madness app review - using newspaper and pencil much easier

I have four different brackets for the NCAA March Madness basketball tournament. That's not a lot, but it can keep you busy trying to follow all the games the old fashioned way by printing out your bracket and circling the winners. Surely Android must have a nice simple way to fill in your brackets and keep them updated for you, so I'll have more time to find other things to waste my time with.

So let's go find one.

First stop (from initial Google search) is NCAA March Madness Live for Android, the Official issue from Turner Sports Interactive, Inc. I just downloaded it, even though the average rating is 1.8.

If the OFFICIAL app sucks, I hold out little hope.

8: 10 a.m. Okay, got it. Now, let's check it out together.

Today is the Friday (March 16th) after the first full day of tournament play. I have four brackets on the desk in front of me. Can this app help me keep track of things?

8:11 a.m. Open app and check it out. First thing, I clicked the Bracket button. Why? I don't know. Because I want to see if I can load my own bracket picks.

Okay, that shows me a bunch of blank spaces for the second round and no discernible way to fill them in.

Oh wait, there's a button for My Bracket. Clicked on it: FORCE CLOSE.

Okay, sucking pretty bad on my Thunderbolt.

After restarting, it asks me for my login and password. I don't have one. Hmmm. And I don't see anywhere on this screen to register. Okay, close that window.

Oh, goodie. Some scores on the screen. Okay, at least I can see all the games and final scores by scrolling one screen. But, since I don't want to spend much more time, the easiest thing is to just pull out my print-outs and do the circling thing. Not a big advantage over doing it online, but more mobile.

8:22 a.m. Okay, rather than go through all of the games right now, I'll explore a little more. I clicked on the My Bracket link and was taken to a website which stated that the site was closed for new registrations, but I could log into my CBS Sports account by visiting the CBS website and logging in. Fortunately, two of my brackets are with CBS Sports.

8:24 a.m. Heading to CBSSports.com on my Android. Okay, right there, on the front page of the regular, old CBS Sports home page are all the scores from last night. So far, I don't need their app for anything. But maybe if I can make CBSSports.com talk to the app and let it know about my picks and keep me updated, that will be good.

8:29 a.m. Okay, really annoying bracket interface and I see nowhere that I can sign in to see my own brackets.

8:30 a.m. Giving up and move on to something else. I'll probably use the app to update my paper brackets, but this March Madness Android app was unable to grab my attention and smoothly guiding me through set-up and features.

Not a fan.

I'm thinking 1.8 is being generous.