Who should be Post-Crescent football player of the year? Vote now: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Post-Crescent player of the year poll is and who runs it

The Post-Crescent, a Wisconsin newspaper publishing at postcrescent.com, runs a public vote asking readers who should be its player of the year in high school football. The ballot carries the title "Who should be Post-Crescent football player of the year? Vote now" and sits in the newspaper's high school football coverage rather than in a standalone awards program. It is a reader-driven award: the nominee list is set by the publisher, and the outcome is decided entirely by the public tally.

The voting itself runs on Crowdsignal, whose ballots live at the poll.fm domain, at the address poll.fm/14561196. Crowdsignal supplies the voting form and the running results view; The Post-Crescent supplies the nominees and promotes the poll to its readership. The program's vertical is sport, its mechanic is a straight public vote, and its audience is the paper's high school football readership across its Wisconsin coverage area.

The 2024 ballot drew its nominees from Fox Valley area high schools, including Neenah, Kimberly, Wrightstown, Freedom, Xavier and Fox Valley Lutheran. Each option pairs a player with their school, so a reader supporting a particular program can find its nominee directly on the list.

Facts at a glance

The dated record: editions, the October window and what is not published

Two editions of the poll are confirmed, in 2023 and 2024. Both cycles placed the voting window in October, which makes early-to-mid fall the period to watch each year the paper runs the award again. The most recent ballot, the 2024 edition at poll.fm/14561196, is now marked closed, and its results view remains public.

That closed 2024 ballot shows the leading nominee finishing at 35 percent on 26,202 votes. The results view lists every nominee with their school and final share, so the complete standings for the 2024 edition can be read straight from the poll.fm page without any login or payment.

Several facts sit outside the published page. The Post-Crescent has not printed the exact day the window opens or the day it closes for either edition, only the October placement; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. The publisher has also not announced the year of the next edition, and no promotion listing for this market carries future round dates. A supporter planning around the next fall season should treat the paper's sports coverage and the live ballot address as the only reliable signals that a new poll has opened.

Because the program has two confirmed edition years, it qualifies as annual rather than a single-run event. Nothing in the published material suggests a change to that October rhythm, but the rhythm itself is inferred from two data points, not from a printed schedule.

How a supporter votes on the live ballot today

Voting takes little effort. A supporter loads the ballot at poll.fm/14561196, reads the list of nominees, selects the radio button beside the player they want to back, and submits. Each option names the player and their Wisconsin high school, so the choice is unambiguous even where two nominees come from the same school, as happened on the 2024 ballot with Xavier.

Once the selection is submitted, Crowdsignal registers it and the results view updates. While the poll is open, that results view shows the running percentages; once it closes, the same view freezes into the final standings. The 2024 edition's closing tally, 35 percent for the leader on 26,202 votes, is visible to anyone who visits the address.

What the ballot page does not carry is any rule text. There is no printed statement on how many times one person may vote, whether a daily return is accepted, or how Crowdsignal's repeat-vote handling is configured for this particular poll. The instruction line above the options on the live ballot is the only authority a supporter has while voting, and it should be read before submitting rather than after.

Supporters who want to do more than a single click generally work through their school community, since every nominee is anchored to a named high school. Outreach ideas that work across public ballots of this kind are collected in the get more votes online guide, which stays platform-neutral.

How this ballot sits beside its Wisconsin neighbours

This player of the year ballot is not the only public vote The Post-Crescent runs. The paper also operates the Appleton Post-Crescent Cellcom Athlete of the Week, a recurring weekly ballot across sports. The player of the year award differs in cadence and scope: it runs once per football season in October and crowns a single seasonal winner, while the athlete of the week format resets every week across the school year.

Other Wisconsin publishers run comparable ballots on the same Crowdsignal host. The Green Bay Press-Gazette Cellcom Athlete of the Week serves the paper's market north of Appleton, and the Oshkosh / Fond du Lac Athlete of the Week covers that pair of cities. Further afield, the La Crosse Tribune Supernova Athlete of the Week and the Racine Journal Times Athlete of the Week (Supernova) run the same weekly shape in their own markets, and the Bound Wisconsin Basketball Player of the Week covers the winter sport statewide.

What makes the player of the year ballot distinct within this set is its seasonal weight. A weekly athlete of the week award resets its tally every cycle, so a single push matters for a short window. The player of the year poll accumulates a season's worth of attention into one October vote, which is why its closing totals, like the 26,202 votes recorded on the 2024 edition, run far larger than a typical weekly ballot's. For a nominee's supporters, that means the campaign window is short, the audience is the whole readership rather than one school's week, and the result is permanent.