Zach Banner

Banner is a native of Tacoma, Washington, where he grew up on the East Side, and has also lived in Puyallup, Washington[2][3][4] He is the biological son of former National Football League (NFL) Pro Bowl offensive tackle and College Football Hall of Famer Lincoln Kennedy, who had dated his mother but never married her.[5][4][6][7] However, he was raised by Ron Banner, the superintendent of the Clover Park School District in Lakewood, who married his mother when he was eight years old and legally adopted him the following year.[4][8][9] His mother, Vanessa, is Chamorro (the indigenous people of the Mariana Islands), was born in Fort Lewis, Washington, and works as a middle school administrator.[10][11][12][6][4][5] Banner had no idea who Lincoln Kennedy was, or that he was his real father, until he was a seventh grader.[13]

He is of Chamorro and African-American descent.[14] Banner was already 5 feet (1.52 m) tall in second grade, 6 ft 4 in (1.93 m) in the seventh grade, 6 ft 6 in (1.98 m) the following year, and 6 ft 7 in (2.01 m) and over 300 pounds (140 kilograms) his first year of high school.[13][5] His maternal grandfather was Rafael "Ralph" Mendiola Sukola, of Agana Heights and Dededo, Guam.[11][15] His younger brother, Xavier, played football at Eastern Washington University as a linebacker, and his sister, Mia, is a high school soccer goalie.[16][17][18]

Banner attended Lakes High School, where he was a two-time football All-American offensive lineman on the Lancers football team, and played two seasons at left tackle.[19][20] He was named the Lancers' Most Inspirational Player when he was a freshman, and still a bench player.[13] As a junior in 2010, he made USA Today All-USA first team, Max Preps All-American second team, Max Preps All-American Medium Schools first team, Max Preps Junior All-American first team, and All-State 3-A first team.[21]

His 2011 honors as a senior included USA Today All-USA first team, Super Prep All-American, Prep Star All-American, Sports Illustrated All-American first team, Max Preps All-American second team, Max Preps All-American Medium Schools first team, Prep Star Top 150 Dream Team, ESPNU 150, Super Prep All-Farwest, Prep Star All-West, Tacoma News Tribune Western 100, Seattle Times All-State, Orange County Register Fab 15 first team, Tacoma News Tribune Northwest Nuggets, and Tacoma News Tribune All-Area first team.[21] He was a finalist for the 2012 Watkins Award, by the National Alliance of African American Athletes, honoring the top African-American student athlete in the nation.[22][10] Regarded as a five-star recruit by Rivals.com, he was ranked as the No. 2 offensive tackle in his class, behind only D. J. Humphries.[23] He was rated the 16th-best prospect in the country by Rivals.com.[24]

Banner also played center in basketball for Lakes High School, averaging 18.6 points and 17.3 rebounds, while guiding Lakes to the 2011 Washington State Class 3A championship in his junior year.[24][21][25]

He was also the Lakes class president, logged 373 community service hours, and had a 3.6 grade point average.[21][4] His nicknames in high school were "Big Daddy" and "The Diesel."[26]

Banner had more than 20 college scholarship offers.[27] Ultimately, he chose USC over Oklahoma and Washington.[28]

Banner played tackle at both positions in college football for the USC Trojans football team from 2013 to 2016 under head coaches Steve Sarkisian and Clay Helton.[29] He played 39 games, and started 37 of them.[29]

He red-shirted in 2012.[30] Banner played only two games during his red-shirted freshman 2013 season, as the back-up offensive tackle against Hawaii and Boston College, before being ruled out for the season due to an injury to both hips that required two hip surgeries.[31][29][25] He had been born with a condition known as femoroacetabular impingement (FAI) that involved extra bone growth on his hips, that prevented him from squatting past 90 degrees, and had corrective hip surgery to address the problem.[31][32]

In 2014 as a sophomore Banner played every game at right tackle and was College Football News Sophomore All-American honorable mention.[29][15] In 2015 as a junior he was First Team All-Pac-12, Associated Press All-Pac 12 second-team, Phil Steele's All-Pac-12 second-team, CollegeSportsMadness.com All-American third-team, and won USC's Offensive Lineman of the Year Award.[29][33] He started all 14 games and his main position was at right tackle, but he started two games at left tackle during his junior year against Utah and Wisconsin.[33] In 2015 he allowed only nine total pressures on 426 pass attempts, according to Pro Football Focus, which graded him as the season's top pass-blocking right tackle, and the 15th-best run-blocking right tackle.[34]

As a senior in 2016, and captain of the team, he was again All-Pac-12 first-team, was CollegeSportsMadness.com All American first-team, Senior CLASS Award All-American first-team, Phil Steele All-Pac-12 first-team, a finalist for the Senior CLASS Award (given to the nation's top senior excelling in community/classroom/character/competition), and was the team's Co-Offensive Lineman of the Year.[33][35] He was the largest player in college football; at one point in 2015 the 6 ft 9 in (2.06 m) Banner weighed 385 pounds (175 kilograms).[3] He played in the Senior Bowl in January 2017.[36]

Banner also played basketball for USC in 2013, but did not see any playing time.[25] Banner joined the historically Jewish, fraternity Zeta Beta Tau, whose members reflected a broad range of ethnicities and races, and majored in Sociology.[14][29] He won the USC Trojans' community service award.[4]

Statistics

Banner at the 2016 Pac-12 Conference Media Days with then teammate Adoree' Jackson and head coach Clay Helton.

Year	Team	G	GS	Defense
				Solo	Total
2013	USC	2	0	0	0
2014	USC	13	13	1	1
2015	USC	14	14	1	1
2016	USC	10	10	0	0
Career		39	37	2	2

Source:[37]

Banner is married to Alexandra Banner, the lead writer for CNN's daily morning newsletter, 5 Things. The offensive lineman proposed on Mount Washington in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in December 2021.

Banner created the B3Foundation in 2017.[61] It supports students in Guam, Tacoma, Washington, and Los Angeles both academically and athletically.[62]

Banner posted an emotional video in response to an anti-Semitic Instagram post by fellow NFL player DeSean Jackson on Twitter, becoming one of the first NFL players to speak out on the issue.[14][63][64] He received a great deal of praise for speaking out in the video, which has been viewed more than 790,000 times.[63] In the video he explains that his friends from USC taught him about the Jewish community. He was a member of Zeta Beta Tau, a historically Jewish fraternity, and credits his fraternity brothers with sharing their families' experiences as part of his learning about the Jewish community. He said: "We need to understand that Jewish people deal with the same amount of hate and similar hardships and hard times. I'm not trying to get emotional right now but I want to preach to the Black and Brown community that we need to uplift them and put our arms around them just as much. When we talk about Black Lives Matter and talk about elevating ourselves, we can't do that while stepping on the back of other people to elevate ourselves. Change your heart, put your arm around people, and let's all uplift each other."[65] He added: "We shouldn't be blind to other groups' history ... and other stuff they have gone through, some of the things that have set them back. If you don't know what the Holocaust is, you're really just failing yourself."[63]

Banner's words gained traction on social media, and he received messages from people who felt the impact of his words on a personal level, sharing that his message made them cry.[63] One donor, Stephen Feingold, the grandson of a Jewish immigrant from Lithuania who lived in Mississippi, in the 1910s purchased a cotton farm based on share cropping, the way that the South continued its racist policies after the Civil War. Feingold stated that he felt a moral olbiation to give money to help the black community. [66].

 Banner's B3 Foundation, which supports Black and Brown youth in Tacoma, Los Angeles, and Guam, quickly received an outpouring of support, receiving more than $60,000 in donations, most in increments of $18, a Jewish tradition honoring the numeric value assigned to Hebrew letters that mean "life" (chai).[14][63] Banner said: "It's just really, really powerful to know that in response to sticking my neck out, they have not only put their arm around me and said, 'We appreciate it. We got your back as well'. I'm ready for that challenge, to be able to stand in solidarity with the Jewish community as I am also trying to uplift my own through the Black Lives Matter, and the Black and brown people."[63] Jews across the nation invited him to Shabbat dinners, and a number sent him fresh baked challah bread in the mail.[14][67] He said: "I made the video to defend my friends. I didn't expect the whole Jewish community to have my back."[14] He added: "I'm talking to rabbis and going downtown to the Tree of Life synagogue that had the shooting, to look at the kids and say, 'Hey, I got your back.' That's my job, as Zach Banner, moving forward."[14]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Zach Banner.

• Zach Banner on Twitter
• USC Trojans bio
• Cleveland Browns bio
• Pittsburgh Steelers bio