The Birmingham News Huntsville Times Player of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Huntsville Times Player of the Week is and who runs it

The Birmingham News runs the Huntsville Times Player of the Week as a high school sports honor decided entirely by public vote. The organizer is an Alabama newspaper whose coverage runs through al.com, and the ballot carries the Huntsville Times masthead, the paper's north Alabama title. That combination tells you the market immediately: this is a statewide publisher putting a weekly spotlight on high school athletes, with Birmingham and Huntsville both anchored in the program's own name.

Crowdsignal's poll.fm service hosts the voting, the same polling platform that carries the paper's other reader ballots. The current ballot asks a single question, who should be the Huntsville Times Player of the Week, and lists the week's nominees with the Alabama high school each one represents. There is no entry fee, no judging panel and no nomination form for readers: the publisher selects the field, and supporters decide the winner.

Because the program is a weekly series rather than a single season-ending award, the ballot you land on is one round in a running sequence. Each round is its own poll.fm page with its own nominee list, which is why the voting link always points to the most recent round rather than a standing season page.

The dated record for this Alabama ballot

The series ran confirmed seasons in 2023 and 2025, which is why the program counts as annual. The voting window in the most recent cycle spanned September through November, matching the fall high school sports calendar that the series follows. The next edition is expected in 2026, and each weekly round within a season carries its own opening and closing on the Crowdsignal platform.

What the organizer has not printed anywhere on the ballot is the exact open and close date of each weekly round, the roster of any categories beyond the single player question, and any per-supporter voting limit; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. That gap matters less here than on a multi-category ballot, because the program's structure is visible in its own title: one weekly question, one winner, repeated across the fall.

The two confirmed years also tell you the series survived a gap in coverage rather than a gap in interest. A weekly newspaper award only exists while the publisher keeps posting ballots, and the 2025 season shows The Birmingham News renewed the format after 2023. For a supporter, the takeaway is simple: when a new nominee list appears on poll.fm, that round is live, and when the results page replaces it, that round has closed.

How a supporter votes on the current ballot

The mechanic on the Huntsville Times ballot is about as plain as public voting gets. You open the current poll.fm page, read the list of nominees The Birmingham News has posted for the week, select the radio button beside the player you support, and press the vote button. The page then offers a results view so you can see where the race stands after your submission.

Nothing on the ballot asks for an email address, a login or a payment, and no purchase step appears anywhere in the submission flow for this Alabama series. The Crowdsignal format takes one selection per submission, and the ballot does not display any statement about how often a single supporter may return during a weekly round. If the newspaper applies a repeat-voting rule, it operates on the platform side rather than being printed on the page.

Two practical points follow from that shape. First, because each weekly round is a separate poll.fm ballot, a vote cast last week does not carry into this week's race; every fresh nominee list starts a fresh count. Second, the results link on the same page is the only published scoreboard, so supporters tracking a close race between Alabama schools should read the running totals there rather than waiting for the newspaper's next print or online announcement.

How this ballot sits beside its Alabama neighbours

The Huntsville Times Player of the Week is one of several Alabama high school ballots in the same family. The closest relations are the Alabama High School Football Player of the Week and the Football Player of the Year, which cover the same fall season from a statewide angle rather than a single publisher's masthead. Basketball has parallel programs for boys and girls, plus a boys Player of the Year, and baseball runs its own weekly honor.

What separates this program from those neighbours is the publisher imprint. The Birmingham News and its Huntsville Times title put their own editorial stamp on the nominee list, so the field reflects the newsroom's weekly selections rather than an open nomination pool. The market is also narrower in name: the program is tied to the paper's north Alabama readership around Huntsville even though the nominees come from high schools across the state.

For a supporter deciding where to spend effort, the difference is cadence. The year-level awards run once per season, while this weekly ballot gives a standout player a fresh chance every week of the fall window, and a school community that misses one round can regroup for the next nominee list without waiting for a season finale.

Strengthening support during a weekly round

Because anyone can vote publicly on the Huntsville Times ballot at Crowdsignal, support grows the way reach grows. The most effective move for an Alabama high school community is to circulate the current poll.fm link directly, through the school's own channels, booster groups and team parents, rather than asking people to search for a ballot that changes every week. A weekly series rewards repetition: each fresh nominee list is a new race, so a reminder when The Birmingham News posts the new field is worth more than a single early push.

The organizer publishes no statement on this ballot about outside help, paid voting or automation, and no purchase path exists on the page itself. That silence cuts both ways: nothing authorizes shortcuts, and nothing on the page explains how the newspaper would treat irregular voting patterns. The safe reading is that the publisher controls the count on its own platform and can act on any round it chooses.

Ground the effort in the mechanic the ballot actually shows: one selection per submission, a results view on the same page, and a new ballot each week from September through November. Communities that treat each round as its own short sprint, and keep the ask simple, tend to hold steady across a whole fall season.