FOX 8 Friday Night Touchdown Game of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

What is the FOX 8 Friday Night Touchdown Game of the Week?

FOX 8 Cleveland (WJW-TV) invites its audience to decide which Ohio high school football matchup earns extended coverage each week of the regular season. The series, billed as the FOX 8 Friday Night Touchdown Game of the Week, runs as a public vote carried by Crowdsignal, whose poll.fm links host each weekly ballot for the station. The ballot currently carrying the series is titled Nominees for FNTD Game of the Week #7 and sits at poll.fm/17521631.

The broadcaster describes the setup on its own voting page: "Each week during the 2026 high school football regular season we will nominate four great match-ups for our FOX 8 Game of the Week." That makes the program a nomination-and-vote cycle rather than a static award ballot: a fresh slate of games goes up, supporters choose, and the station follows the winner with deeper coverage.

Quick facts

Cleveland anchors the series because the organizer carries the city in its own name, yet the nominee list pulls in schools from surrounding communities such as Canton, Mayfield and Tallmadge, all printed on the live ballot.

Which seasons of the FNTD Game of the Week are confirmed, and when does each round run?

Confirmed seasons for the series run 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026, drawn from twelve weekly ballots across those four falls. That history marks the Touchdown vote as a recurring autumn fixture on the FOX 8 Cleveland schedule rather than a single-season promotion.

Within a season the rhythm is weekly: a new nominee list goes up during the high school football regular season, and the voting month span reaches from August into October. The 2026 season follows the same pattern, with the Week 7 ballot standing for the round currently open.

Fixed calendar detail is thinner than the seasonal picture. FOX 8 Cleveland prints no stated open or close date on the ballot itself, and no closing hour appears beside the nominees either. Nothing beyond the headline round is scheduled in public view, so a supporter aiming at a particular Friday should treat the live page as the timetable that matters.

No published round calendar and no per-supporter rule sit beside the nominee list; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

How do you vote in the current FOX 8 Game of the Week round?

Taking part takes a minute. Open the ballot at poll.fm/17521631, where the nominated pairings sit in a plain list with each team's win-loss line printed beside its name. Choose the game you want the station to cover, then press the Vote control underneath the list. A View Results link beside it lets anyone see the running tally without committing a choice.

The Week 7 nominee list

Eligibility is broad by design. The organizer's voting page puts it this way: "Students, staff, players, coaches, fans and FOX 8 viewers are invited to cast their votes for the schools they would like to see receive extended coverage." Nothing on the ballot screens participants by location or affiliation, and no sign-in step interrupts the path from reading the list to pressing Vote.

How does this ballot compare with other Ohio public-vote contests?

Ohio carries a crowded slate of public votes, and six sibling ballots share the statewide page family. Best of Ohio and Best of Cincinnati run as annual best-of awards sweeping many business and lifestyle categories. The Akron Community's Choice Awards and CBUS Top Picks Community Choice Awards serve city audiences in the same award-show shape. Pizza Madness, staged by 97.1 The Fan around a Columbus audience, turns a single food rivalry into a bracket-style event. Against that field, the FOX 8 Friday Night Touchdown Game of the Week stands apart in three ways: it is weekly instead of annual, it decides broadcast coverage rather than a trophy, and its ballot is built from concrete athletic pairings instead of open-ended nominee pools.

Round recaps underline that concreteness. Coverage of one past round put it directly: "The Friday Night Touchdown Game of the Week was in Summit County, where Archbishop Hoban hosted Walsh Jesuit." Weeks like that give the vote a specific stadium, a county and two named school communities, which few broad award ballots can offer.

Readers weighing award-style ballots against this football vote can compare formats on the sibling pages, starting with Best of Ohio, and readers focused on trophy-style contests can review award vote support separately.

How can a school community strengthen its showing week to week?

Every round resets the board, so momentum never carries over: a school that led one week starts from zero when the next nominee list posts. That structure rewards fast organization. As soon as a pairing appears, the school's own students, staff, players, coaches and family networks are explicitly among the people the organizer invites, which makes a straightforward chain of group chats, hallway reminders and morning announcements the most natural engine. Because the prize is broadcast coverage rather than money, the ask is easy to frame: stronger support means more eyes on the program that Friday night. For a fuller playbook on rallying genuine backing around a public poll, see how to get more votes online, then apply it inside whatever terms the ballot posts for that week.