Fan Gadsden Times Area Postseason Football Coach of the Year: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Gadsden Times coach of the year fan vote is

The Fan Gadsden Times Area Postseason Football Coach of the Year is an award decided by public vote, one that The Gadsden Times, the daily newspaper serving Gadsden and northeast Alabama, puts before its readers after each high school football season. The ballot recognizes the coaches behind area postseason runs rather than the players, a focus that sets it apart from the player-of-the-week and player-of-the-year programs the same Alabama market carries.

The ballot is a Crowdsignal poll at poll.fm/14808162, carrying the most recent edition. The format is a straightforward public tally: a reader who opens the page sees the nominated coaches listed by name with the community each represents, selects a choice and submits it. Nothing on the ballot indicates a fee, a nomination round or a login requirement in front of the vote itself.

The audience is the newspaper's coverage area. The communities that appeared on the most recent ballot span northeast Alabama, including Gadsden itself along with Albertville, Boaz, Ashville, Collinsville, Guntersville, Fort Payne, Piedmont and Jacksonville. That footprint matches the high school sports desk's territory, and support in the vote tends to organize around those school communities rallying behind their own coach once the December window opens.

The dated record for the coach of the year ballot

Two editions of the award are confirmed: 2023 and 2024. Both windows fell in December, which fits a postseason award decided after the Alabama high school football playoffs conclude. The ballot for the 2024 edition, poll 14808162, is marked closed, and the tally it displayed showed the leading choice at 61 percent with 756 votes recorded.

That closed poll is the most recent confirmed edition. The Gadsden Times has not announced a year for the next run, and no nomination phase is described anywhere on the ballot, so the 2024 edition is the latest dated fact about the program. Because the two confirmed years both sit in December, the working assumption for any future edition is a late-season window, but the newspaper has not printed the precise opening and closing days, the structure of the ballot beyond the coach of the year focus, or any ceiling on repeat voting; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

The practical reading for a supporter is straightforward. The award exists, it has run in consecutive years, and it is decided entirely by the public tally on Crowdsignal. When The Gadsden Times publishes its next postseason coach poll, the ballot itself will carry the coach list and the closing state, and the paper's coverage will carry the announcement.

How a supporter votes in the Gadsden Times coach poll

Voting in the coach of the year fan vote is a short sequence on the Crowdsignal ballot. A supporter opens poll.fm/14808162, reads the list of area postseason football coaches, selects the radio button beside the preferred choice and presses the submit control beneath the choices to log it. Crowdsignal takes the selection at once and the running tally appears, which is how the 61 percent leading share on the last ballot was visible to anyone watching the poll.

There is no nomination form to fill in before voting. The Gadsden Times presents the coach list directly, so the whole action a supporter performs is the selection and the submit. The ballot carries no printed instruction about returning on later days, and no account creation step appears in front of the vote, so the literal mechanic is a visit, a click and a submission.

The state of the poll matters as much as the mechanic. The 2024 ballot is closed, so a visit today shows the final result rather than a live vote. A supporter who wants to take part in the next edition needs the new ballot the newspaper opens, which per the confirmed pattern should appear in December. The paper's high school football coverage is where that announcement lands first, and the new poll link replaces the closed one as the active voting address.

Where this ballot sits among the Alabama fan votes

The coach of the year award is the postseason coach-focused entry in a family of Alabama high school fan votes hosted on the same Crowdsignal platform. The nearest neighbours are the Alabama High School Football Player of the Year and the Alabama High School Football Player of the Week, both of which honor players rather than coaches. Around them sit the boys basketball player of the year, the boys basketball player of the week, the girls basketball player of the week and the baseball player of the week.

What makes the coach of the year ballot distinct within that set is its timing and its subject. The weekly programs recur through their sports' seasons, while this award waits for the football postseason to finish and then asks readers to weigh the coaches whose teams made those runs. Its ballot also carries a geographic spread that is specific to northeast Alabama, drawing coach entries from communities such as Albertville, Boaz, Ashville, Collinsville and Guntersville rather than a single metro area.

For a supporter, that means the outreach playbook differs from a weekly award. A weekly player poll rewards a fast start every seven days; the coach of the year vote is a single December window where the whole school community's attention lands on the same ballot at the same time, and the final tally, not an early lead, decides the award.

Strengthening support for a Gadsden Times coach nominee

Because the coach of the year ballot is a single December window on Crowdsignal, effective support looks different from a weekly player poll. There is no season-long accumulation to lean on: the entire push happens inside the window The Gadsden Times opens, and the final tally decides the award. The practical moves are the ones school communities already know, sharing the poll link through booster groups, alumni pages and family networks while voting is live, and reminding people the poll closes rather than assuming they will return.

The newspaper prints no rules text on the ballot about organized voting pushes, so there is no published statement from the organizer either permitting or restricting coordinated support for a coach nominee. That silence is not permission, and it is not a prohibition; it simply means the ballot itself sets no stated boundary. Supporters planning any organized effort should check the terms printed on the new ballot when the next edition opens, and the votes guide covers outreach approaches that stay within what a public newspaper poll expects.