Michigan High School Football Player of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

Belleville versus Munising on the same ballot

The structural fact that defines this poll is also the one most voters overlook: the High School on SI Michigan ballot is genuinely statewide with no division gate. Bryce Underwood of Belleville — a Wayne County D1 program that routinely produces Power Four recruits — and a D7/8 Upper Peninsula nominee from Munising appear on the same weekly list at si.com/high-school/michigan, competing for the same recognition, decided by the same fan-vote total. No enrollment adjustment. No divisional weighting. Whoever reaches more real voters before Sunday at 11:59 p.m. wins.

That design choice makes Michigan's SI poll one of the few places in prep football where Cass Tech's generational Detroit alumni network and Iron Mountain's tight Upper Peninsula community face each other on equal footing. On the field they never meet — the MHSAA keeps them apart by division, geography, and class. On this ballot, the gap between them is only about which community turns out in full.

Everything downstream from that — how to nominate, how to vote, when the window closes, what the organizer prohibits — matters in proportion to how well you understand which kind of community your nominee's school represents.

What the 2024 nominees reveal about the ballot's real range

Two confirmed weeks from fall 2024 show how broadly the SI editorial team actually casts the net. In early September, sixteen football players appeared on the ballot: Bryce Underwood (Belleville, D1, Wayne County), Jaxson Dosh (Davison, D1, Genesee County), Maverick Hammond (Parma Western, D3, Jackson County), and Drew Cady (Oxford, D2, Oakland County) were among them — a spread from metro Detroit to mid-Michigan before the season was two weeks old.

By the week of October 15–22, the ballot had expanded to include Jake Morrow (Grand Blanc, D1), Derrick Jackson (Cass Tech, D1), Aaron Collins (Caledonia, D2, Kent County), Grady Augustyn (West Catholic, D3, Kent County), Jakoby Lagat (Goodrich, D3, Genesee County), Abram Larner (DeWitt, D3, Clinton County), and Gerry Hanson (Anchor Bay, D1, Macomb County), plus nine additional players statewide.

The division breakdown is reference material; the sentence that matters is this one: Division 1 Wayne County programs and D3–D6 mid-Michigan schools appeared in roughly equal numbers across both confirmed weeks. The editorial team is not running a poll about the state's most prominent programs — it is running a statewide poll, and that difference shows in the nominee list.

Mechanics: Sunday close, confirmed unlimited cap, and what the organizer prohibits

The poll lives inside a dated article at si.com/high-school/michigan, published Monday or Tuesday after the prior week's winner is announced. Anyone can vote by scrolling to the embedded widget, selecting a nominee, and submitting — no account, no login, no email address. Live standings update on-screen after each submission, so the running totals are visible to every visitor throughout the window.

The organizer has confirmed the cap explicitly: "we do not set limits on how many times a fan can vote during the competition." That makes the SI Michigan poll an unlimited-cap format, which separates it from some regional outlet polls — including MLive's geographic football polls, which may operate under a per-hour or per-day restriction. A supporter who votes Monday, returns Wednesday, and votes again Sunday is doing exactly what the platform's own terms permit.

The one hard prohibition is automated scripts and macros. SI has stated that machine-generated submissions violate the poll terms and can result in vote removal and athlete disqualification. The athlete — not the voter — carries that consequence, since no voter account exists to penalize. Read the active poll article for any updated terms before the window closes.

One structural consequence of the unlimited cap: a mid-season ballot featuring sixteen nominees — confirmed in early September 2024 — is decided less by raw fan-base size than by which community sustains its effort across the full six-day window. Belleville's Wayne County base is larger in absolute terms than Decatur's Van Buren County community, but the poll has closed with D6 and D7/8 nominees on the board. The cap does not constrain the field; attention across the window does.

Community networks: who turns out, and how fast

A campaign for the SI Michigan weekly poll is really a question about network topology. The confirmed nominee list from 2024 shows five distinct kinds of community, and each activates differently.

Wayne County D1 programs — Belleville and Cass Tech — carry the largest absolute reach. Cass Tech's alumni network runs through generations of Detroit residents; Belleville's Wayne County base is among the state's largest per-school fan communities. Wide networks, but wide networks take time to coordinate. A poll link has to travel through many loosely connected groups before it becomes votes, and the Sunday deadline is six days, not six weeks.

Catholic and parochial school programs — West Catholic in Grand Rapids, Warren De La Salle in Metro Detroit — draw on multi-generational alumni communities that extend well beyond a single neighborhood. Former players and families spread across Kent County and greater Detroit respond to a shared-identity appeal that secular public schools rarely match. When a West Catholic nominee appears on the SI ballot, the outreach chain runs through parishes, alumni associations, and extended family networks simultaneously.

Mid-Michigan D3 through D5 communities — DeWitt in Clinton County, Owosso in Shiawassee County, Napoleon in Jackson County — are tighter geographically and often more centralized in practice. A link shared through one consolidated booster email or team group chat reaches a higher percentage of the relevant community than a comparable push from a program embedded in a large metro area.

Upper Peninsula programs — Munising, Iron Mountain — sit in communities where the school is the primary shared institution. When a UP nominee appears on a major platform, that community votes with high concentration. The absolute number is smaller, but the participation rate relative to community size is the highest of any category on this ballot. A D1 program that turns out at ten percent of its fan base and a UP program that turns out at eighty percent of its fan base will be close in final vote totals — and the UP program will have worked far less to get there.

Knowing which category applies to your nominee's school is the starting point for deciding how to spend the six-day window. A Catholic parochial program reaching its alumni chain two days early has a structural advantage; a D1 metro program that starts mobilizing Friday has likely given away the decisive days. Because this poll has no cap, the contest is ultimately about reach — and services such as structured vote-support campaigns exist for weekly polls with this format for entrants who want to extend their reach beyond organic community outreach.