USA TODAY High School Sports Launches Search For America's Best High School Football Coach

Fan voting kicks off this week at usatodayhss.com;

Winning coach to earn $2,000 in athletic department funding for his/her school

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Oct 02, 2013, 09:59 ET

MCLEAN, Va., Oct. 2, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- USA TODAY High School Sports—the nation's leading source for high school sports news and information—has launched the fourth installment of its wildly popular "Best of" contest series, this time asking fans to cast their vote for the Best High School Football Coach in the country.

Voters will choose their winner from a pool of 408 active head football coaches—eight in each state—selected by USA TODAY staffers after more than a month of conversations with local media and other state/school officials with high school football expertise.

The Best High School Football Coach will be determined via three rounds of voting, with state round voting closing on October 8. The 51 winners in each state plus Washington, D.C. will then advance to a regional round which runs from noon (ET) on October 9 until noon (ET) on October 18, where they will be divided among eight regions of six or seven coaches apiece. The eight regional winners then move onto the national round, which starts at noon (ET) Oct. 21 and ends at noon (ET) Oct. 29. The champion is crowned based on most votes in the final round.

The coach chosen as America's Best High School Football Coach will receive $2,000 for his/her athletic department, while second place will be awarded $1,000. Third place will receive $500, fourth will take $250 and fifth will be awarded $100. All eight finalists will receive banners for their schools.

The "Best Of" contest series launched last November with the best high school football rivalry competition, won by Brookfield vs. Marceline in Missouri. In January, Hartford (Vt.) was crowned as the People's Champion high school football team. Last spring, the Centralia (Ill.) Orphans were named the best high school mascot in a contest where 80 million total votes were cast.

Visit USA TODAY High School Sports to check out the list of coaches and vote.

The USA TODAY Sports Media Group encompasses all sports initiatives across USA TODAY Sports and Gannett's more than 100 well-known local media brands. It also includes the sports photography wire service USA TODAY Sports Images, leading high school sports destination USA TODAY High School Sports; For The Win, the first mainstream sports media property focused exclusively on "social news," and designed specifically to resonate on social networks and non-traditional media channels and platforms; Sports On Earth, a joint venture with MLB Advanced Media dedicated to great sports writing in all its forms; and the hundreds of sites within USA TODAY Sports Digital Properties, including Hoopshype.com and mixed martial arts site MMAjunkie.com, among many others. USA TODAY is owned by Gannett Co., Inc. (GCI).

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SOURCE USA TODAY Sports Media Group