Mr. PA Football: How Voting Works & How to Win

What is Mr. PA Football, and who runs it?

Mr. PA Football is Pennsylvania's premier independent high school football awards programme, now completing its 16th consecutive year with the 2025-26 ceremony scheduled at Milton Hershey School's Purcell Friendship Hall in Hershey on Saturday, March 14, 2026. The programme is presented by Sports Recruiters and administered by the Mr. PA Football Foundation, a registered 501(c)3 non-profit whose mission covers youth sports development, sportsmanship, and academic support.

• Voting is conducted at mrpafootball.com across five successive public rounds, narrowing from a statewide nomination pool down to the final award winners.
• The fan vote is weighted equally with a coaches panel and a media jury — one-third each — so organised community outreach is genuinely decisive, not cosmetic.
• Pennsylvania's school enrollment size splits the award into two separate trophies: Big School (PIAA classes 4A-6A) and Small School (PIAA classes 1A-3A).
• The programme honours multiple awards beyond Player of the Year: the Lineman Award (Big and Small School), the Michael Payton Quarterback Award, and the Mickey Minnich Legendary Coach Award.
• The annual Hershey ceremony includes a public reception at 1:30 PM and awards programme at 3:00 PM, drawing families, coaches, and prep football media from across Pennsylvania.
• The Mr. PA Football Foundation is separate from the PIAA; it is a privately operated organisation that independently curates nominations and manages the voting platform.

Who has won Mr. PA Football? Recent Big School and Small School winners

The table below lists confirmed recent Mr. PA Football Player of the Year recipients. Both Big School (4A-6A) and Small School (1A-3A) trophies are awarded each year; the programme has run continuously since 2010 and is now in its 16th year.

Several past winners went on to prominent college careers. Nicholas Singleton (Governor Mifflin, 2021 Big School winner) signed with Penn State and became one of the Nittany Lions' featured backs; Kyle McCord (St. Joseph's Prep, 2020 Big School winner) played at Ohio State and transferred to Syracuse. Stone Saunders (Bishop McDevitt) represented the established Central Pennsylvania football corridor that regularly produces Big School nominees. Eli Zimmerman's 2024 Small School win came after Northwestern Lehigh posted a perfect 16-0 record and captured the PIAA 3A state title — illustrating how Small School candidates from the Lehigh Valley compete on equal terms with larger-school nominees through the fan vote's equalising one-third weight.

Which Pennsylvania schools appear most often in the Mr. PA Football nomination pool?

The WPIAL (Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League) and PIAA's Mid-Penn Conference account for a disproportionate share of Big School nominees — the WPIAL alone regularly places multiple players in the top-50 round. The Philadelphia Catholic League (led by St. Joseph's Prep) competes with WPIAL programmes for Big School recognition in most years. Small School production is notably strong in the Colonial League (Lehigh Valley), the PIAA 2A-3A bracket in western Pennsylvania, and Columbia County's Class 2A corridor anchored by Southern Columbia.

How does Mr. PA Football voting work across five rounds?

The Mr. PA Football voting process at mrpafootball.com runs in five successive public rounds from late autumn through late winter. Each round eliminates candidates, channelling fan, coach, and media votes toward a smaller finalist pool until the final award winners are identified. For a broader explanation of how multi-round online contest polls function, see our online contest voting guide.

The five-round structure

The one-vote-per-person-per-day-per-category cap means that competitive totals in Round 1 — where the field is widest — require the broadest possible daily voter participation across the full window. Votes must be submitted through the official form at mrpafootball.com; mrpafootball.com posts interim results after each round closes so candidates can gauge their standing. Duplicate votes and votes tied to invalid email addresses are identified and removed from the total before round results are published.

What are the Mr. PA Football rules — and can you buy votes?

The official mrpafootball.com rules state that fans may cast one vote per day per voting category. Duplicate votes submitted on the same day — and votes tied to invalid email addresses — are subject to removal before round results are published. The platform applies these removals before posting standings, meaning inflated same-day counts from a single person are stripped rather than left in the final tally.

The honest answer on paid promotion: paid-outreach services that reach real people — each voting once per day using a genuine email address within the daily cap — are structurally identical to an organised booster campaign that activates a larger audience. Services that attempt to submit multiple votes in a single day from one person, or use temporary or invalid addresses, fall clearly outside the mrpafootball.com rules and are subject to removal. Any paid approach should be evaluated against the current round's stated rules at mrpafootball.com, and should supplement — not replace — organic community mobilisation. See our sports fan poll service for cap-matched delivery options.

For a broader discussion of legality, contest terms, and the distinction between bot fraud and real-audience paid outreach, see our vote-buying guide.

How do you build votes for Mr. PA Football across the five rounds?

Because the daily cap is one vote per person across a multi-week window, and because the fan vote carries only one-third of the score alongside coaches and media, effective Mr. PA Football campaigns focus on sustained breadth rather than concentrated bursts. The five-round structure means voter energy must be maintained across several months — a very different challenge from a single-week weekly athlete poll.

• Know the Round 1 open date and launch on day one. Monitor mrpafootball.com and its social media for the announcement that the current year's voting page is live. Every day of Round 1 is a cumulative opportunity that cannot be recovered after the round closes.
• Distribute the direct mrpafootball.com voting URL, not just the candidate's name. Supporters who receive a direct link to the vote page — with a one-sentence explanation of the daily-cap mechanic — convert at a much higher rate than those who receive general awareness messages.
• Activate Pennsylvania-specific networks. WPIAL booster communities in Allegheny, Beaver, and Washington counties are tightly organised through Facebook groups and regional prep football media. Philadelphia Catholic League alumni networks are geographically dispersed but highly engaged. Mid-Penn Conference school communities in Dauphin, Cumberland, and Perry counties follow mrpafootball.com actively through outlets like PennLive and EasternPAFootball.com.
• Send a daily reminder for the full duration of each round. A broadcast group chat or email list with one message per morning — including the direct vote link and current standings — keeps daily vote volume consistent. Supporters who voted on day one frequently drift without a prompt.
• Engage out-of-state supporters. The mrpafootball.com poll has no geographic restriction. College alumni, extended family, and Pennsylvania diaspora anywhere in the country each contribute one vote per day. Communicate this explicitly — many supporters assume statewide-named polls are restricted to in-state voters.
• Escalate outreach at each round transition. When mrpafootball.com announces that Round 2 is open, send a dedicated campaign restart message highlighting the candidate's Round 1 advancement and the narrowed competition. Supporters respond more urgently when they understand the bracket is getting smaller.

When a campaign has fully exhausted its organic reach across family, school, booster, and regional networks, some families and school communities use a paid promotion service to reach additional real voters paced to the daily cap. Read the full vote-getting strategy guide and check available packages before deciding on any paid supplement.

When does Mr. PA Football voting open and close each season?

The Mr. PA Football programme runs on a football-season-to-spring-ceremony calendar tied to the PIAA football schedule and the annual Hershey awards date. The timeline below reflects the 2025-26 cycle, which concluded with the 16th annual ceremony.

Exact dates for each round are published on mrpafootball.com and announced through the programme's social media channels — the dates above reflect the 2025-26 cycle and may shift slightly in future years. Always verify the current round's open and close dates directly on the voting page before launching a campaign. For PA-specific context on other statewide high school sports fan polls, see the Pennsylvania contest hub.

How does Mr. PA Football differ from other Pennsylvania football awards?

Pennsylvania has several football player-of-the-year programmes, and they overlap in the players they recognise but differ substantially in structure, operator, and audience. The table below clarifies where Mr. PA Football sits relative to the other major programmes.

Mr. PA Football's distinguishing feature is its independent foundation status, its own dedicated website and 16-year brand identity, and its Hershey ceremony — no other Pennsylvania football award has a comparable annual banquet that draws nominees, their schools, and statewide prep football media to a single public event. The five-round voting structure, with fan votes equal to coaches and media, is also unique: most editorial-only state awards give fans no formal role, while most pure fan-vote polls exclude coaches and journalists entirely.

For additional Pennsylvania fan-vote contests across other sports, see the Pennsylvania sports voting hub. For the full directory of US contest guides, visit the USA contest index.