The SB Tribune High School Football Player of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Tribune's weekly football poll is and who runs it

This program is a weekly public vote run by the South Bend Tribune, the daily newspaper covering the South Bend region of Indiana. Week by week through the fall season, the paper names a slate of nominees from area schools and asks readers to choose the player of the week. Crowdsignal hosts the ballot at poll.fm, and the current round sits at poll.fm/14593584.

The poll sits squarely in the paper's high school sports vertical. A recent Week 12 round asked readers the paper's standard question, who is the week's player, and drew nominees from Mishawaka, NorthWood, Concord, New Prairie and Niles. That mix of northern Indiana schools, plus a school just across the state line, is typical of the South Bend coverage area, where the Tribune's readership straddles the border region.

Because this is a publisher-run reader poll rather than a chamber or festival contest, the stakes are editorial. The weekly winner is recognized in the Tribune's high school football coverage, and the vote totals themselves become part of the story the paper tells about the season.

The dated record: editions, season window and the current close

The confirmed edition years are 2022 and 2024. The 2024 season is documented through a run of weekly ballots dated from August through November, which is how the season window is known. The series is annual in shape, one full football season of weekly polls per year, but the Tribune has not announced which years beyond those two carried editions or when the next season's first ballot will open.

The current cycle has one hard date. The Tribune's own announcement for the September 18 round states that voting is open with unlimited opportunities and no restrictions until the poll closes Thursday, Sept. 24 at 5 p.m. ET. That close time is the one deadline a supporter can plan around with confidence.

What the Tribune has not printed is the opening date of each weekly round. A new ballot simply appears when the paper publishes it, usually alongside that week's game coverage. The publisher has also not printed a roster of future rounds or a schedule of when each week's poll opens and closes; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

Two other gaps are worth naming plainly. No category list exists for the series, since the poll asks a single player-of-the-week question rather than running multiple categories. And the ballot page carries no prize description, so the weekly recognition in the paper's coverage is the only stated reward.

How a supporter votes in the South Bend Tribune football poll

Voting takes one visit. A supporter opens the live poll.fm ballot, scans the nominee list, selects one player, and presses the vote button. No account is offered on the ballot and no login step appears in the Tribune's description of the poll, so the whole action happens on a single page.

The rule that matters most is the one the Tribune states itself: unlimited voting with no restrictions until the poll closes. That sentence, printed in the paper's announcement of the September 18 round, means a supporter may return to the ballot repeatedly, casting fresh votes whenever they like, before Thursday, Sept. 24 at 5 p.m. ET. It also means a nominee's total can move in large jumps late in the week, which is exactly what the Week 12 numbers show: the leading nominee finished at 50 percent on 25,725 votes, with the runner-up at 42 percent on 21,636 votes, totals only an unlimited ballot produces.

For a family or school community backing a nominee, the practical routine is a daily return: vote, pass the link along, and remind people before the Thursday afternoon close. Because each weekly round is a separate poll, support has to be rebuilt every week rather than carried over from the previous ballot.

How this poll sits beside its Indiana neighbours

Indiana has a crowded field of publisher-run athlete polls, and the Tribune's weekly football vote is one of the most local of them. Its closest sibling in shape is the Indiana High School Football Player of the Week, a statewide football vote, while the Tribune's version draws its nominee slate from the South Bend coverage area specifically.

Other neighbours run on different rhythms. The Bloomington Herald-Times Athlete of the Week is a south-central Indiana weekly across sports, and the Evansville Courier & Press Football Player of the Year is a season-end award rather than a weekly poll. The two SI programs, the Indiana SI Football 3A Player of the Year and the Indiana SI Football 4A Player of the Year, split by class size, and the Indiana SI Boys Basketball Player of the Year moves the format to a winter sport.

What makes the Tribune's poll distinct is the combination of a weekly reset, a single football question, and an unlimited-vote rule stated by the organizer. A nominee can lose one week and win the next, and the vote totals are large enough that organized school-community pushes, not casual clicks, decide the outcome.

Strengthening support in an unlimited weekly vote

The Tribune's unlimited-voting rule shapes everything a campaign can do here. Because a supporter may vote repeatedly until the Thursday 5 p.m. ET close, the winning move is frequency, not reach alone: a smaller school community that votes every day beats a larger one that votes once. Build a daily reminder around the football program's own channels, and time the final push for Wednesday evening and Thursday morning before the close.

On outside help, no rule about purchased or organized votes appears on the ballot page, and the Tribune's announcement states only that voting is unlimited. That silence is the organizer's published position; anything stricter would have to come from the paper directly. For a wider view of tactics that suit a repeat-vote ballot, our votes guide walks through the options, and award vote packages explains how purchases are structured for polls like this one.