KSL Sports Utah County Football Player of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

KSL splits Utah into three ballots. This one is Utah County only.

Most readers assume there is a single statewide "KSL Player of the Week" vote. There isn't. KSL Sports runs three parallel football polls every week of the fall season, covering Utah County, Salt Lake County, and Northern Utah, each with a different sponsor and a completely separate voter pool. Mr. Mac backs the Utah County ballot. Hercules First Federal Credit Union backs Salt Lake County. John Watson backs Northern Utah. A nominee from American Fork never competes against a nominee from Weber County; they're on different pages, decided by different fan bases, in the same week.

That geographic split is the single most useful thing to know before you vote. Land on the wrong region's poll and your click does nothing for the Utah County nominee you're trying to support.

Fan-vote polls like this one follow patterns common to sports recognition contests nationwide; our fan poll voting guide covers the mechanics that apply across similar weekly ballots.

What the nominee pool actually looks like (and what's missing)

KSL Sports doesn't publish an archive of past Utah County winners, vote totals, or margins anywhere on the site. That's a real gap, and it's worth naming rather than papering over: there's no public record to point to for "last year's closest race" or "the biggest blowout." What we can confirm is the pool of schools the ballot draws from, and that pool tells its own story.

The 2025-27 UHSAA realignment put four of the county's biggest programs in one bracket. American Fork, Lone Peak, Skyridge, and Lehi now share 6A Region 3, one of the densest, most competitive regions in the state. Four large schools, four fanbases, one region. That alone should produce a deeper weekly nominee pool than either of KSL's other two regions carries most weeks.

South county rounds it out. Springville, Payson, and Spanish Fork sit alongside Provo and Orem's older programs, so the ballot mixes sprawling Wasatch Front suburbs with smaller, longer-established towns. Two very different kinds of communities voting on the same page.

Beyond football, Utah's high school athlete of the week program recognizes standout performers across other sports on a similar weekly cadence.

How the vote actually runs, week to week

The poll goes up weekly at kslsports.com/high-school-players-of-the-week during football season. KSL Sports staff review the prior week's Utah County results, pick standout nominees, and embed a free poll widget in that week's article. No login. No app.

The platform caps votes per device on a rolling cycle, but the exact number isn't fixed across weeks. It's posted on the live widget itself. Check it before you plan anything. For a general overview of how weekly media-outlet fan polls like this one work, see our buy-votes-online guide; the specifics below are KSL's alone.

Because there's no account wall, anyone can vote from anywhere. Alumni who left Provo decades ago, extended family in another state, BYU-connected networks scattered well outside Utah County: all of it counts the same as a vote cast from inside the county line.

Who decides the winner, and where the record stops

Vote count alone. KSL Sports staff choose who gets nominated based on the prior week's box scores, but once the poll is live, they don't touch the outcome. Highest total when it closes wins. Full stop, no panel, no score adjustment.

From nomination to announced winner

1. Weekly results review: KSL Sports staff track Utah County football results from the prior week's games.
2. Ballot curation: standout performers are selected for that week's Utah County ballot, alongside the separate Salt Lake County and Northern Utah ballots.
3. Poll opens: the ballot goes live at kslsports.com/high-school-players-of-the-week with the current week's nominees and voting instructions.
4. Winner announced: once the poll closes, KSL Sports publishes the Utah County winner alongside the winners of the Salt Lake County and Northern Utah ballots.

What KSL doesn't do is publish the losing margin, or an archive of past scores. So anyone trying to gauge "how close is close" here is working without a public baseline, unlike outlets that print raw vote counts after each cycle.

Since the outcome rests entirely on vote count, families weighing outside help often start by reading our real votes explainer to understand what genuine, human-cast voting support looks like on a platform like this.

What moves the needle in a county-only ballot

A statewide poll dilutes any single network's effort across hundreds of schools. This one doesn't. Because only Utah County programs appear on the ballot, the total pool of realistic competitors most weeks is a dozen schools, not sixty, so an organized local push has an outsized effect compared to, say, a full-state basketball MVP vote.

Every tactic above assumes the cap that's live on the widget that week. Push past it with automation and you're not gaining an edge, you're just getting flagged.

Rules, vote integrity, and the paid-promotion question

KSL Sports treats this as a fan-engagement feature celebrating weekly performances, not a formal prize contest with legal stakes attached. That distinction matters for how seriously to take the rules, and how seriously not to.

There's a real line between two very different things:

• Automated scripts or bots: rapid machine requests that ignore cooldown timers. Against standard poll terms. Detectable by rate-limiting.
• Paid outreach to real human voters: people voting from their own devices, within whatever cap is posted that week. Not structurally different from a booster text chain reaching more households, just organized by someone outside the family.

Whether that second category satisfies the spirit of KSL's terms is a call each entrant makes after reading the live poll page. No cash prize rides on this. No Utah sweepstakes statute applies. So the downside of getting it wrong is reputational, not legal.

For the broader landscape of Utah school and community fan-vote contests, visit the Utah contest hub. For the full US index of statewide and regional athlete recognition polls, see the USA contest guide.