What's the score?

My phone home screen with a live update
 of the Atlanta game with Cincinnati

It's a huge weekend in USL League One action as the playoff race heats up and the competition for the Players Shield is fierce.

Wow, it's clearly been a while since I've written here as that is a terrible opening line. It's cliched, boring and doesn't tell you anything that you didn't already know. I'd be embarrassed to turn that in as a first year journalism student. You all deserve better than that. 

You're not going to get better, but I want you to know that I know that you deserve better. I wouldn't fault you for abandoning this post now, though I hope you stick around. Hopefully it gets better.

Sixteen of the league's 17 teams are in action beginning at 2 p.m. (eastern) on Saturday and running through 7 p.m. Sunday. That's, that is a lot of soccer to try to keep track of. Like, a lot of games. Throw in the fact that my oldest has a cross country meet and my youngest has a birthday party to go to this weekend and it's going to be difficult to follow all the games as I'd like to.

And, for reasons that remain unclear to me, USL League One makes it even harder to follow by restricting access to one of my favorite features. 

Google's "Pin Live Score" does exactly what it says. It pins a little box of pretty much any game you want onto your phone's screen, floating over whatever you're doing on your phone at the time. It's a fantastic way to be able to keep track of multiple games when you're out living life and not able to watch a game.

But, for reasons that remain unclear, USL League One restricts this and only allows Google to show the score of a match at its completion. Those seven games on Saturday that I may not be able to watch, I can't follow them without having to pull up the League One website and see the scores. That's a lot more work than just glancing down at my phone.

And as of Thursday night when I'm writing this, there's not even any ads on the schedule or scores page on the League One Website outside of a reference to the Prinx Tires Cup so the idea that it's driving traffic to a sponsored page isn't the reason.

Making matters more confusing, this appears to only apply to League One. I've set my phone to automatically pin any Charleston Battery game and there have been no issues with adding USL Championship games to follow in real time.

I can't speak to all the various sports leagues, but I'm able to do this for not only the USL Championship, but the NFL, Major League Baseball, English Premier League and more. League One is the outlier when it comes to access.

Pinning Live Scores started with soccer. It was launched in the run up to the 2018 World Cup though I  probably didn't discover it until 2020. 

At the time it launched, you had to go in each time a game started and add it to your screen. However, roughly a year after it started, you could adjust your settings so certain teams would automatically appear about 45 minutes before the scheduled start time.

There was a time when League One allowed their games to be updated in real time. I can remember following several games down the stretch of the 2022 season as Tormenta was fighting for a playoff spot. I was at the stadium covering South Georgia while following the goings on of Richmond or Chattanooga at the same time. It was great.

I don't know when, exactly, access to the League One games stopped. It's been a little while now and I hope that the ability to pin live scores comes back at some point in the future. Making it harder to follow games and the league as a whole is certainly a choice.

 Is this really that big a deal? No, of course not. 

But is it annoying to a small (possibly only me) segment of the League One fan base? Yes, it is. 

Am I asking questions in a way to summarize my point because I'm not sure how to go about wrapping this up? Also yes.

Enjoy the games this weekend. I know I will. I just wish it was easier to follow along when I can't be in front of my television watching.