WSOC Big 22: How Voting Works & How to Win

What is the WSOC Big 22 — and why does it matter for Charlotte football?

The WSOC Big 22 is Charlotte's most prominent annual high school football honor. Each fall, WSOC-TV Channel 9 — the Cox Media Group ABC affiliate serving the Charlotte-Gastonia-Concord market — selects 22 of the top prep football players across the Charlotte region of North and South Carolina, based on on-field performance and character. The program entered its 16th year in 2025, making it one of the longest-running TV-station football recognition programs in the Southeast.

• Run by WSOC-TV Channel 9, a Cox Media Group station that is the top-rated local news outlet in the Charlotte DMA.
• Presented by Bojangles' Famous Chicken'n Biscuits, the Charlotte-born fast food chain with deep regional sports ties.
• Covers both North Carolina and South Carolina schools in the broader Charlotte metro — NC schools dominate, with the Mecklenburg and Union county programmes drawing the heaviest fan mobilisation.
• The first round of public voting regularly receives more than 140,000 fan votes, making it one of the highest-participation prep football polls in the Carolinas.
• The Player of the Year winner's school receives a $10,000 prize — a tangible community benefit that drives serious booster-club engagement beyond typical fan polls.
• WSOC-TV airs a "Big 22 Players to Watch" television special each season, giving the 22 honorees broadcast exposure across the Charlotte market.

Unlike weekly athlete-of-the-week polls, the Big 22 is a season-long program: selection to the 22-player roster is itself an honour, distinct from — and decided before — the Player of the Year fan vote.

Which Charlotte-region schools and players have dominated the Big 22?

The Big 22 draws from a wide swath of the Charlotte metro, anchored by the powerhouse NCHSAA 4A and 3A programmes in Mecklenburg and Union counties plus competitive CISAA private schools. The table below maps the major feeder schools by area and classification.

Mallard Creek has produced a Player of the Year in the program — linebacker Trenton Simpson (2019), who went on to play at Clemson. Monroe's Jordan Young became the first back-to-back POY winner in the program's history, winning in both 2023 and 2024 before committing to Clemson as a safety. In 2025, Hough High School's Samari Matthews became the first Husky to claim the honour, marking Lake Norman's northern suburbs as a rising force in Charlotte-area football. South Carolina schools, particularly in Rock Hill's York County, appear on the roster regularly — Northwestern's Dupree Hart won the award in 2014, and Mount Pleasant's Landon Honeycutt was recognised in 2018.

The NC-SC split reflects the Big 22's genuine regional scope, but Mecklenburg and Union county schools in North Carolina account for the majority of roster spots and virtually all of the fan-vote engagement.

Recent WSOC Big 22 Players of the Year

The Player of the Year award goes to the finalist who wins the final public fan vote, combining WSOC-TV sports staff input with the public tally. Below are the confirmed recent POY recipients — real names, real schools, real years.

The POY list illustrates the programme's breadth: winners have come from SC York County, Mecklenburg County (Charlotte city schools), Union County (Monroe), and the growing Lake Norman corridor north of Charlotte. The absence of winners from Charlotte Catholic or Myers Park — consistently among the state's strongest football programmes — reflects the unpredictability of fan-vote outcomes when multiple large-booster schools enter the same final.

How does WSOC Big 22 voting work — rounds, cap, and timeline?

The WSOC Big 22 runs on a multi-round structure that is distinct from simple weekly newspaper polls. Understanding the stages is essential before planning any vote campaign.

The two-stage voting structure

Stage one: Channel 9's sports team selects the 22-player roster through an editorial process — public vote does not determine who makes the Big 22. Stage two: from the full roster, WSOC narrows to five finalists for Player of the Year; fans then vote in the open POY poll to determine the winner, with WSOC staff input weighted alongside the public tally.

The vote cap is up to 9 votes per day per voter — significantly more generous than typical hourly-cap newspaper polls, meaning a well-organised campaign can accumulate large totals across a multi-week POY window.

Voting takes place at wsoctv.com and requires no account, email, or registration. Both mobile and desktop browsers are supported. Because the programme covers North and South Carolina, supporter networks on both sides of the state line can vote without restriction — a family in Rock Hill, SC casts the same vote as one in Ballantyne, NC.

How do you build a winning vote campaign for WSOC Big 22?

The 9-votes-per-day cap — considerably higher than hourly-cap polls — means daily consistency over the full window matters far more than a single surge. Every realistic supporter network should be activated and reminded daily, not just once. For a broader overview of online voting strategy across contest types, see our full guide to online contest voting; the Charlotte-specific notes below focus on what works in this market.

Network activation in the Charlotte market

The Big 22 fan base clusters around a few high-engagement community groups: NCHSAA 4A booster clubs in North Charlotte (Mallard Creek, Vance), southeast Charlotte private school networks (Charlotte Catholic, Providence Day), the growing Lake Norman corridor (Hough), and the Union County programmes (Weddington, Monroe). These communities differ in structure but share one trait — they are densely networked on Facebook, Instagram, and group chats.

The 9-per-day cap means a single engaged supporter can accumulate over 300 votes across a five-week window — without violating any programme rule. A booster club email list of 500 families, each voting the daily maximum, can theoretically generate 150,000+ total votes over that window. That arithmetic explains why Jordan Young's back-to-back POY wins were possible: a Union County community with high engagement sustained across two full seasons.

When organic networks have been fully mobilised and the margin remains tight entering the final two weeks, some campaigns use a paid promotion service to reach additional verified real voters. If you pursue that approach, prioritise a provider that delivers paced, genuine votes that respect the daily cap structure — sudden spikes are detectable and counterproductive. Our sports fan poll service is designed around cap-matched pacing. For general information on how these services work across different poll types, see our how-to guides.

What are the Big 22 rules — and is buying votes allowed?

The WSOC Big 22 is a promotional fan-vote program run under Bojangles' sponsorship, governed by Channel 9's own contest rules rather than NC prize-promotion law (the $10,000 prize goes to the school, not an individual, which simplifies the legal framework). For the full balanced treatment of buying votes in online contests, see our buy-votes guide; the specific Big 22 notes are below.

The practical line the rules draw is between automated scripts (prohibited) and human voters (permitted). A supporter casting 9 genuine votes per day from their own device, or a booster club email reaching 500 additional families — each of whom casts their own genuine daily votes — falls squarely within the intended fan-vote model. The contest is designed to reward organised communities, not just individual effort.

• Automated bots and VPN rotation: violate the stated rules; produce detectable traffic signatures; result in vote removal from the official count.
• Multiple devices per household: each device counts as its own voting surface for the daily cap — fully permitted and expected by the programme design.
• Paid real-voter outreach: structurally equivalent to a booster club reaching more families; whether it satisfies the spirit of the rules is a judgement each entrant makes after reading the current official contest page.

The $10,000 school prize raises the stakes relative to recognition-only polls — which is why organised campaigns in this contest tend to be more intensive than for typical weekly newspaper polls.

See the North Carolina contest hub for other regional poll programs active in the Carolinas, and the full US guide index for comparison across markets.