Imperial Valley Press Daily News Preseason Offensive Player of the Year: How Voting Works & How to Win

What this preseason award is and who runs it

Fans decide the Daily News Preseason Offensive Player of the Year, an honor for high school football published by Imperial Valley Press under its Daily News masthead. The award singles out offensive players before the fall season begins, which places it in the preseason window of the paper's football coverage rather than alongside end-of-season awards.

The vote is carried by Crowdsignal on its poll.fm service, and the live ballot sits at poll.fm/15911638. Crowdsignal is a polling service widely used by newspapers for reader polls, and it presents this award as a short single-question form: the nominee list, a selection control, and a submit action. The current ballot asks exactly the question in its title, who the Daily News Preseason Offensive Player of the Year is, and lists the nominees by name with each player's high school attached.

The market for this ballot is the Florida panhandle. The nominees on the current edition are affiliated with schools in the Niceville, Freeport and South Walton communities, which anchors the award to that stretch of the panhandle rather than to a statewide field. Supporters who follow panhandle football will recognize the names of those programs, and the publisher draws its nominee pool from that coverage area.

Because no individual athletes should be listed on a reference page for a poll naming minors, nominees are described here by school community and position group rather than by name. The full roster, with every player's name, is printed on the ballot itself and is the authoritative list for the current edition.

The dated record for this poll

Three editions of this award are confirmed: 2023, 2024 and 2025. That run of consecutive years establishes the award as an annual fixture of the publisher's preseason coverage. Each of those confirmed cycles placed voting in August, which fits the preseason framing, since the poll exists to name an offensive player of the year before the season kicks off.

What the publisher has not released alongside the ballot is any advance schedule. The organizer publishes no dated open and close dates, no roster of ballot categories and no statement of a per-supporter vote rule anywhere with this award, so a supporter planning around specific dates should confirm on the live ballot each cycle. The poll appears, collects votes through the month, and closes without a posted calendar.

The absence of a posted calendar is worth understanding as a feature of the format rather than an oversight. A preseason poll is timely by design: it rises with the coverage of upcoming football and ends before the games start. Supporters who want their vote counted should therefore treat the whole of August as the practical window rather than waiting for a closing-day announcement that does not come in advance.

A 2026 edition is the expected next step given three consecutive years, but nothing about it has been published yet. When the new edition goes live, it will appear at a poll.fm address promoted through the Daily News coverage, and the nominee list will be assembled fresh for that preseason.

How a supporter votes on this ballot

The mechanic is as plain as fan polls get. A supporter opens the Crowdsignal page, reads the nominee list, taps the selection beside the preferred player, and submits. There is no registration, no email verification and no form beyond the selection itself, which is why polls of this shape spread quickly through team parent groups and school social accounts: a share link takes a supporter straight to a clickable ballot.

The current ballot presents its nominees grouped as a single list, each entry naming the player and the high school he represents. Because the award is specifically for offensive players, the list draws from positions on that side of the ball, and the preseason timing means the poll often runs while summer practices are still under way.

The open question for supporters is repetition. The ballot prints no statement about whether the same person may come back and submit another selection, and the publisher keeps any per-supporter policy off the page as well. Crowdsignal gives the poll's operator control over that setting, so it can differ between editions. The wording at the foot of the live poll, including any note about repeat votes, is the governing text for the current edition, and a supporter who intends to return daily should read it first.

Because the window falls in August and no close date is posted ahead of time, the practical habit for a committed supporter is simple: vote when the ballot is live, share the link through the networks that follow the school, and keep an eye on the poll through the month so the final days of voting are not missed.

How this ballot sits beside its Florida neighbours

Within the wider set of Florida fan polls, this award stands apart in cadence and scope. Its neighbours include the Central Florida Flag Football Player of the Week, the Central Florida High School Baseball Player of the Week and the Central Florida High School Boys Basketball Player of the Week, all of which run as weekly series through their sports' seasons. This award instead fires a single preseason shot each August.

The seasonal siblings make the contrast sharper. The Central Florida High School Football Player of the Week covers football once the games begin, while this Daily News poll asks its question before a down has been played. The Central Florida High School Girls Basketball Player of the Week and the Central Florida High School Girls Flag Football Player of the Week round out that weekly family in other sports and seasons.

Geography separates them too. The weekly programs carry Central Florida in their names, while this ballot's nominee pool sits in the panhandle, with schools from the Niceville, Freeport and South Walton communities. Supporter bases therefore do not overlap much, and a vote earned here carries a different audience than a vote in the weekly series.

For a nominee's supporters, the tactical difference matters. Weekly polls reward sustained attention across a season; a preseason award concentrates everything into the days before kickoff, which is why sharing the poll.fm link early in the window counts for more here than a late push.

Strengthening support in this preseason poll

Support in this award comes down to reach during a short window. Because the ballot is a click-and-submit Crowdsignal form with no account barrier, a nominee's supporters can convert attention into votes with a single shared link. The August timing means the most valuable days are the earliest ones, when the poll is fresh and the preseason coverage is drawing readers who have not yet voted.

Outreach that fits this ballot is local and direct: the school's own social accounts, team parent messaging groups, booster club posts and word of mouth at summer practices. A shared link with a sentence about who the nominee is performs better than a bare link, since voters arriving at the poll see a list of names and need a reason to stop at theirs.

On the question of outside assistance, the organizer's position is simply absent from print. Imperial Valley Press does not publish any policy on the ballot addressing purchased or automated voting, so nothing on the page sets out how the publisher treats it, and the practical risk is that the publisher can moderate a poll it runs. Support built through genuine community networks carries none of that uncertainty, and the votes guide on this site details outreach suited to polls of this shape.

The last habit is calendar discipline. With no posted close date, supporters should treat the published August window as the deadline and make their final push in its final week rather than assuming extra time.