After almost 40 years of development, the nation’s first truly fast wireless phone, the Sprint EVO hit stores last week. And while most of the world, for most of the past decades, could have cared less, suddenly with soccer on the thing, people woke up.

Mobile phones gets sports! Duh!

The World Cup will be streamed live on the EVO and I cannot wait to test it on my test unit. And I am not the sole soccer nut here. There are close to 2,000 articles on the World Cup 4G within the last few hours. And the notion that you can get a soccer match on your phone might just catch the national imagination.

Obviously, what is going on here, is the mobile-savvy, rest of the world is demanding here what they already have overseas: live sports on phones. So in many ways cell operators and promoters have no choice. But still, Sprint gets some credit for being first to bring soccer to phones in any scale.

Again, sports continues to drive awareness in mobile devices. Amazing.

The app is decently priced at $2.99. And it seeks to be a in game companion for the second season of the NBA. In general, the app does a nice job of pumping out player stats, providing what amounts to DIY color commentary on the game. And otherwise helping us all keep Maurice Evans straight from Jamal Crawford. So as one struggles to follow the series —  how much do you really know about the Hawks or Los Suns — Game Time helps.

Obviously, the tool is not perfect. video clips are feebe highlights at best, y0u are facing the limits of the cell network on what content gets to the mobile phone and at some point how many screens do you need to follow a game?

But at least for the NBA Playoffs, a portable app that pumps out players stats on demand is a plus. And NBA deserves some credit.  Swissh!

Starting Thursday, the NFL draft will kick off at Radio City Music Hall in New York. And while I’ve always thought it would be slick if the league mixed things up with some cheerleader drafts — the Rockettes would make an excellent cheerleading combine —  this year’s draft will be about one thing tech wise: Not one, but two major cell carriers will be carrying NFL Mobile’s live coverage of the event: Verizon and Sprint both will offer NFL Mobile on many of their phones.

And let the mobile sports app wars begin.

First of all, it’s clear that these sorts of extra-game events are the perfect storm for mobile sports tech. Yeah, ESPN’s prime time coverage of early rounds might be interesting for awhile. Where Bradford, McCoy, Suh and maybe Kyle Wilson from Boise State end up might impact a real game or two across the league. So all fans care. But after those top 25 or so players, what are we really taking about here? How the draft will affect your team. And your players.  Who is going watch the full draft all day and night? I mean, please.

And poof, suddenly the NFL is producing a targeted sports event prefect for mobile devices. And the NFL, to its credit, knows it. The league has positioned itself perfectly to get into the house big time with mobile. Its mobile app is essentially a team-specific broadcast of news, blogs and relevant video. And it will be fascinating to see how the 2nd through 7th rounds will be managed by the league.

Here are my predictions.

1) Sprint pulls a Manning: Sprint has invested in lots of unique NFL content for several years. So I expect its draft coverage should be the Payton Manning of the pack: the clear leader. Any serious fan should get to a Sprint phone, and fast.

2) Verizon will show some game, but more like a Jets game. Verizon’s mobile feed is really the wild card, since I have not seen it, and VZ won’t comment on it. But basically, my read is they aren’t even sure themselves what they will get, since they are just hosting the NFL mobile device. So expect a Jets-like rebuilding year with some decent coverage for Verizon’s mobile sports efforts.

3) ESPN becomes the mobile Mets. Clearly, and I mean CLEARLY, the undisputed worldwide leader in sports television is the undisputed worldwide loser in mobile. The Mets analogy is all too chilling for Bristol. After spending hundreds of millions on mobile, starting a half decade ago, where exactly is ESPN for the handheld? Let’s be honest: nowhere. NFL analyst John Clayton is cute and all, and Sportscenter is still fun, but will that be enough of a reason to follow ESPN on your phone when the NFL produces as deep, if not deeper, a product all by themselves?

It’s incredible but true: unless ESPN finds some raison d’mobile and fast, the moving version of sports will be Superbowl III: the big championship game that got away.

Look what a horse race mobile sports content has become.

The first issue is how will NFL Mobile work on Verizon versus how it currently works on Sprint. Clearly, the bigger screen and fatter processors will run the experience more effectively than, say, the Sprint Hero. But Sprint is kicking some sport tech butt with its 4G network coming nationally this year. And with its new Evo 4g phone due out this summer, chances are the Incredible won’t seem so incredible for long.

And look how smart the NFL has played the wireless game: By creating freestanding, Apple App independent content, it keeps its games off the general Web, makes mobile-specific riffs on what it does, and then plays the operators against each other to keep pricing high and customer interest sharp.

The NFL really is the smartest league in sports right now.

I have never been part of the mile-high wifi club. It’s blisteringly expensive. Connectivity basically sucks. And I really — REALLY — hate the in flight Skypers: “I’m on a plaane. Yea, Ma. on a plane. Right. At 30,000 feet … 30 thousand…. ON THE PLANE. Ma, I’m ON THE PLANE!!!!”

Spare me.

But now … I am taking it back: once feeble in-flight data access might have found a killer app: In pocket sports apps. I have been staying on top of today’s The Masters here on the flight back from New Orleans to LGA, using the iPhone Masters app. Coverage has been decent. Scores are accurate. Video is not awful. And over all, I could pretty much stay on Lee and Phil battling it out. And — like most american men — stare in at Tiger and wonder what all those chicks must have been like.

And if you think about it, mobile sports apps make a lot of sense for in-flight entertainment. They do not rely on heavy data connections, like most sports web sites. They can run on even the crappiest smart phone. And developers actually get paid to make these apps, so in all they offer a smooth, high-quality high tech sports experience.

Which honestly, is better than what YouTube can deliver.

So next flight out: Toss on the NBA, Masters or MLB app, and you’ll see. These all offer the exact right amount of connectivity, without turning your trip time into a complete gadget fest. I realize this is two things I am liking in the same week. So I must be going soft. But the fact is, smart phone sports apps might just be the sleeper tech pick for sports right now.

Not bad.

The new app will basically replicate the Web site, with full video from Amen Corner and other spots on the course, a full radio feed of the event,  a robust leader board. And some nice use of interactive stats and info.

Particularly for the early rounds, this thing could actually rock. My question, of course is, will it even work at all on AT&T’s crap network? I am fully expecting this to be an only “good for WiFi” App.

But who knows, it could surprise me. The Masters does some serious high tech stuff with sports. And if anybody can fit their content down the 1.5G network that AT&T passes off, it will be them.

Golfer’s ready?

The League (that’s no typo — the NFL really has become “The League,” capital T, capital L) said today that Verizon will carry part of its NFL Network feed to its 68 million or so subscribers — about 90 percent of the entire cable universe. Not bad.

The four-year deal is valued at $720 million — a little over $10 a sub, or about $2.5 a year per sub. Keep in mind that cable companies pay $3.50 a sub for ESPN’s content.

Verizon will pump a full slate of NFL Network stuff through its cell system: coverage of the draft, the Sunday Night game, the RedZone and lots more. It’s definitely worth a test drive: I have been impressed with Sprint’s riff on NFL content.

Basically, this is a good deal for everybody. Verizon is smart to lock down a long-term deal with the NFL now since the price of sports content will only skyrocket. The NCAA’s  Basketball deal is coming due soon, which will almost certainly set a new record. Comcast now has NBC and is big into regional sports networks. So it is a new player. And don’t forget the new slate of digital content operations looking for content. Apple will need something compelling to sell on iPads. As does Google. They even violated its “never pay for anything” rule by carrying cricket on YouTube.

The NFL, in turn, gets to broaden its mobile reach while still getting paid. Imagine what poor AT&T and TMobile will wind up paying with a few years of traffic data under its belt.

Really makes the whole ABC/Cablevision spat look like small potatoes.

Just look at the data video tape.

At first techno-blush, the Tiger Woods press conference seemed almost like a digital non-event. CNN.com’s International Edition did a nice job pointing out that the press conference did middling Twitter traffic and almost no Facebook buzz. The Obama Inauguration, for example, was a much bigger deal. And in fact, the conference only generated about 800K downloads of the video feed on YouTube. That’s small Web potatoes for sure.

But the cable news ratings were far higher. Nielsen numbers floating around say that FoxNews reported 2.1 million saw the conference, with ESPN, CNN, The Golf Channel, HeadlineNews and MSNBC also running the event; and totaling 4.5 million additional viewers watching — for something on the order of 6.6 million viewers in the cable universe. Or about the size of a season average middle year of The Sopranos. Maybe these potatoes are bigger than we thought.

And there was broadcast: NBC, ABC and CBS also ran the conference. For some reason, there’s no public data that I could find for how many viewers tuned in. But that’s no biggie to tease out. The news audience is well understood. So lets guesstimate that the Tiger event equaled the standing nightly news audience, which usually combines to deliver about 20 million viewers. (That’s probably low, to be honest. Event viewing is usually much higher. But you’ll see it does not matter.)

That combines for about 26 million people, net of broadcast and cable, who saw the conference — or way more than the 22 million who saw Game Six of last year’s World Series. Tiger is big sports potatoes indeed.

And this pile is only a fraction of the total audience who is aware of Tiger. Now the figures get simply mind boggling. The Google news scraper for the terms “tiger woods” for mid day Feb. 23 show a total of 12,000 plus news stories on that topic. TWELVE THOUSAND! Or roughly 12 times the size of the coverage for white hot tech stories like the Apple iPad, which out are lucky to garner 1,500 stories.

Now how many people read all those stories? Again, no hard data exists, but we can make an excellent guess. There are now 6 billion worldwide cell phone subscribers that have easy access to this digital Tiger hype information, which makes it entirely probable that the full English language speaking world, or roughly 3 billion people, had direct touch with this story. And it is also probably that these people told someone else they saw it, meaning, … everybody, everywhere on earth knows the deal with Tiger.

Name another event that comes close to this level of world wide awareness? I can’t. Can you?

And can it get any more delicious than this:  The digital revolution with all its wonders of silicon, IP packets and crystal glass has made a simple story about a golfer cheating on wife into the most well known thing ever.

Not bad, for a man standing in front a blue curtain. Talking.

You can’t make it up.

Looks like the future is finally catching up with Sports Illustrated. After missing pretty much every single tech development in sports since cable TV — which went to ESPN — and regional sports coverage — which went to the teams themselves — SI looks like it will be an early mover in digital magazines. The company has thrown up on YouTube a demo video that highlights how their magazine will work on a tablet computer. Much of the demo is wishful thinking: Image quality and speed to render images will be dependent on the processing power of the tablet that supports it, which can vary. And live content will also only work in areas that have active Web access or a full bit rate cell phone connection, which could be pricey. But still SI gets credit for being a thought leader in this digital magazines. And factor in that Apple is expected to roll out a table computer in 2010, and suddenly Sports Illustrated might just be … gosh HOT! You go, SI.