Tonight was another kickoff of another NFL season, my second at ESPN.com. While it didn’t quite have the aura of the first one, it still was quite busy and quite entertaining. The most fun thing tonight was watching the new ESPN.com NFL RealTime application. This thing is awesome! We’re hooked up directly to every NFL stadium around the league and we can push that directly out to our users. Whatever shows on the scoreboard (for clock, score, line of scrimmage, down, and distance) appears on your computer within a few seconds. Today, I was reading off the seconds on the TV feed and the RealTime app was keeping up. Unbelievable (and awesome work by the guys that hooked it all up).

We also launched the RealTime scoring on League Manager. While we had some feed issues from our provider along with a minor glitch or two, the thing worked beautifully. Score updates came in with the little game update pane sliding out and scores marched upwards as the clock wound down. Super slick.

Of course, the game absolutely was awesome tonight. It came down to the last 20 seconds as the “idiot kicker” missed his first field goal in over a season. Just to show you the level to which we take our football watching, check this out:

idiot kicker wiffs

That’s my boss cheering on his fellow Canadian with his plexiglas ESPN The Mag cover (they raffle off the ones they make for the SportsCenter set each week). Too bad for him that Vanderjagt pushed the kick wide.

Great night for football. If you get a chance, check out ESPN NFL RealTime… it’s awesome.