Tuscaloosa News Fan Vote AISA-AHSAA Class 3A Football Coach of the Year: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the AISA-AHSAA Class 3A coach of the year fan vote is

Run by The Tuscaloosa News, the daily newspaper serving Tuscaloosa, Alabama, whose coverage lives at tuscaloosanews.com, the Fan Vote AISA-AHSAA Class 3A Football Coach of the Year is a high school football award decided by readers. Unlike the player of the week and player of the year ballots the same newsroom publishes, this one asks readers to choose a coach, and it narrows the field to the AISA-AHSAA Class 3A small-school classification rather than spanning every class in the state.

Crowdsignal, the poll.fm service, hosts the ballot, and the voting page for this program sits at https://poll.fm/16506109. Voting is open to any reader: the page lists the nominated coaches alongside their schools, and supporters pick the one they want to see win. No registration wall is described on the ballot and no paid tier is attached to it.

The schools whose coaches appear on the 2025 ballot include Aliceville, Berry, Gordo, Greene County, Greensboro and Hale County, which places the program firmly in the west Alabama small-school football scene the newspaper covers week to week. The pairing of private-school and public-school programs under one AISA-AHSAA heading is unusual among Alabama fan votes and is part of what gives this ballot its own identity.

The table gathers the program's fixed details.

The dated record behind the Class 3A coach ballot

This program carries confirmed editions in 2025 and 2026, a pair of years that marks it as an annual fan vote. The 2025 edition has already run its course: the ballot page for that year carries a title ending in Poll Closed, so the voting window is finished and the page now reads as a closed poll rather than a live one.

The 2026 cycle is anchored to January. The timing evidence for the current ballot places both the opening and the closing of the window inside that month, which makes this a short, concentrated voting period rather than a season-long poll. A January 2026 story on tuscaloosanews.com covering the newspaper's small-school fan votes confirmed the 2025 Coach of the Year result among area candidates in the AISA-AHSAA Class 3A, tying the closed 2025 edition to published coverage.

The annual pattern points toward a 2027 return, though the newspaper has not announced a next cycle. Several facts about the ballot are also left off the page: The Tuscaloosa News has not published the specific opening or closing day of the January window, a category roster for the ballot, or any per-supporter limit; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. Whether a nomination round precedes voting is likewise not published anywhere on the ballot page.

The practical reading is simple: the month is known, the day is not, and the poll.fm address is where the answer appears first.

How a supporter votes on the poll.fm coach ballot

Voting in the Tuscaloosa News coach of the year fan vote takes only a few steps. A supporter opens https://poll.fm/16506109, the Crowdsignal ballot for the program, and lands on a page titled for the current edition. The ballot lists each nominated head coach beside his school, with pairings drawn from the AISA-AHSAA Class 3A field that includes programs in Aliceville, Berry, Gordo, Greensboro, Greene County and Hale County.

The choice is made by selecting the radio button beside one coach. The ballot is single-choice, so one selection per submission, and no write-in box appears on the voting page. Submitting is a matter of pressing the vote button on the Crowdsignal ballot, which logs the choice during a live window. Once an edition ends, the page is relabeled as a closed poll, as the 2025 edition now is.

Two practical points follow from the mechanic. First, because the window is concentrated in January, a supporter who intends to vote should reach the ballot during that month; arriving after the close means reading a result page instead. Second, the ballot prints no rule about repeat submissions, daily returns or device limits, so a supporter planning more than one visit has no published guidance to rely on and the live page is the only published authority.

No account creation step is shown anywhere on the ballot, which keeps the barrier to participation as low as a fan vote can be.

How the coach ballot sits beside its Alabama siblings

The Tuscaloosa News fan vote family on this site includes six sibling programs, and the coach of the year ballot differs from every one of them in subject. The Alabama High School Football Player of the Week and the Alabama High School Football Player of the Year honor players in the same sport, while the Alabama High School Baseball Player of the Week, the Alabama High School Boys Basketball Player of the Week, the Alabama High School Boys Basketball Player of the Year and the Alabama High School Girls Basketball Player of the Week carry the same reader-vote format into other sports.

Three differences stand out. The coach ballot honors the sideline rather than the roster, so the nominees are head coaches with years of standing in their communities rather than players whose profiles rise and fall with a season. It is confined to the AISA-AHSAA Class 3A small-school classification, where the player ballots draw from a wider field. And it runs as an annual January award rather than a weekly series, so its window is short and its result lands once per cycle.

That shape matters for anyone deciding where to spend effort: a weekly player ballot rewards repeated engagement across a season, while this coach award concentrates everything into a single January push on one Crowdsignal page.

Strengthening support for a coach in this fan vote

Because the Class 3A coach of the year ballot is a single-choice public vote on Crowdsignal with a January window, support that works here is support that reaches real west Alabama football followers quickly and points them at one page. School communities in Aliceville, Berry, Gordo, Greensboro, Greene County and Hale County are natural audiences, since each has a coach on the ballot and a base of families who follow the program.

On outside help, the organizer has published nothing: The Tuscaloosa News has printed no rule for this ballot on purchased votes, voting software or coordinated campaigns. That silence cuts both ways, because it leaves nothing in writing either permitting or banning assistance, and the live page is the only authority a supporter can check.

What is certain is the mechanic itself: one selection, one button press, one concentrated month. Any plan built around turning out genuine supporters during that window fits the ballot as it actually works. For a fuller toolkit, see how to get more votes online, and for the award-ballot context specifically, buy award votes explains how these newspaper fan awards differ from open entry contests.