Big Man, Big Personality and Big Plans: USC's Zach Banner Is Ready for Stardom
LOS ANGELES — The day Zach Banner told LenDale White to "stay away and stay irrelevant" could be simultaneously the most and least Zach Banner thing Zach Banner has ever done.
As an All-American offensive tackle at Southern Cal, Banner is known for having plenty to say. If you need an athlete to speak to a group of at-risk teens, Banner is your guy. Halftime speech? USC coach Clay Helton says Banner's are so loud he can barely hear himself think.
Last offseason, he and his fellow USC linemen got stuck on a hot, cramped elevator for two hours, and Banner pulled out his phone, turned the whole thing into a freestyle rap session and posted it to Instagram. Before you knew it, the "elevator rap" was playing everywhere from Worldstarhiphop.com to Good Morning America.
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In high school, Banner was known to walk up to the line of scrimmage, make a joke and have the other team busting up as the ball was snapped.
It just never stops with this guy.
"Always an entertainer," said his father, Ron Banner. "Always wanting to make people laugh and have fun."
Zach says his ambition is to be the next Michael Strahan. With a body that measures 6'9", 362 pounds, a personality just as big, and the affability of a daytime talk-show host, he'll have as good a shot at that as anyone.
But he is not a man without an edge. So when White, a former USC and NFL running back, went on Twitter and called Banner a "big ass teddy bear" who only wanted to shake hands with his opponents, Banner told him to grow up, stay away and stay irrelevant.
"You push him to a point," said "uncle" Marc Allen, Ron Banner's best friend and Zach's unofficial uncle, "and he will show you what 6'9" looks like."
The scrape with White came right after the Trojans had lost to Utah to fall to 1-3 this season. Banner has since said he regretted getting into it with White in a public forum but wasn't sorry for sticking up for himself and his team.
That was Sept. 23. USC hasn't lost since and now faces a resurgent Penn State in the Rose Bowl on Jan. 2.
Banner is one of the largest players in college football, but before that he was the largest kid in his high school, the largest kid on the playground, the largest zygote in the Lamaze class. That's not altogether surprising given that his biological father is Lincoln Kennedy, who was listed at 6'6" and about 335 pounds during his 11-year NFL career.
"In second grade, Zach was five feet tall," Ron said. "His teacher was 5'2". We'd walk into class, and it'd be like Baby Huey sitting at this tiny desk."
That has its advantages, but there is also the very real matter of being considered a sort of physical oddity. Even if people know on an intellectual level they're looking at a seven-year-old, when a seven-year-old is the size of a middle-schooler, folks can't seem to help treating him like one.
"He's always kind of felt that," Ron said. "People expecting more out of him."
Zach found it easy enough to give it to them. He liked hanging around adults and at an early age found he was able to converse on an adult level.
So when you meet him on an overcast mid-December day at USC's campus in Los Angeles, and his refrigerator chest puffs out, two fire-hose arms breathe freely outside a cutoff shirt and two thumbs the size of sweet potatoes hook under the straps of his backpack, there is no mistaking that you are standing next to a college kid. But when a member of the faculty stops to ask him a favor, you'd swear these two men were peers.
"Hey, you gonna be around in the spring?" the faculty member asks.
It's Dr. Broderick Leaks, a staff psychologist in the student health center. He runs a class Monday nights for black freshman athletes at USC, and he wants Banner to come speak.
"Definitely, I'm going to be working out in Orange County," says Banner, who has already graduated from USC and will be preparing for the NFL draft in the spring. "You still have my email?"
Banner jots down his email address.
"We were just talking about you the other day," Leaks says. "You came in talking about what you were going to do, and you handled it."
This sort of thing happens a lot with Banner. In a 49-minute walk around campus, Banner is interrupted, greeted, flagged down and chest-bumped a half-dozen times. He invites it—networking is one of his specialties—but when you are in the vicinity of a man this large, you are intuitively aware of him. There is no "we must have walked right past each other" with Zach Banner.
Being one of the biggest guys in the country has its advantages, but there are limits to how big a football player can be and still be effective. As far as Banner is concerned, the cutoff is somewhere around 385 pounds, which is what he weighed about this time last year. From a scouting perspective, though, it's the only reason Banner isn't in the NFL already.
"I don't have any felonies, I've never beat up one of my professors, I'm a good football player, there's things I can improve on," Banner said. "The one thing people can knock me on is, 'Is he going to eat himself out of the league?'"
That would be an unhappy result for any player, but for Banner it would submarine a detailed life plan that involves not only playing in the NFL but also becoming a media star and returning to East Tacoma, Washington, as a benefactor, a local boy done good, and a mentor. He likes to be looked up to, and he knows that for him it all starts with his football career.
"My brother said something the other day in the paper, calling me his biggest role model," he said. "I [freaking] cried, dude. I'm serious, man. That type of stuff, that's what fuels me. That's what makes me go to workouts, never miss stuff. That's all it is."
You know how people say they wish they knew then what they know now? Zach Banner is the guy who knew then. He's always been the kid at the grown-ups table.
Ron recalls a group camping trip when all the kids were off playing, and Zach was sitting around the fire, listening to the adults.
"Zach," Ron had to tell him, "go play with the kids."
But it's not that easy when you're bigger than everyone else. Kids his own age didn't know what to make of him, so they mainly just ignored him. Kids older than Zach saw him as a threat to be vanquished.
"Older kids would challenge him," Ron said. "Like, 'OK, little second-grader, you can't beat me up.' These are fifth-graders. It wasn't every kid, but it was impactful."
Allen, who was Ron's former teammate at Washington State, recalls a story when Zach was six but playing in a league for eight-year-olds at the Boys & Girls Club in East Tacoma. Physically, Zach was ready, but he hadn't yet learned how to tell somebody to leave him alone. His trades were football and comedy, not hostility.
"Zach didn't understand that people didn't like him because of his size," Marc said. "He was too young to get that. Well, this one kid did not like him and called Zach out. In football terms, that means line up, go head-to-head and collide into each other like rams. He was not aware that this kid meant him bodily harm.
"So when Zach—who grew up a fan of WWE's The Rock character—got in the middle with this kid, he bends down, puts his right hand out and goes, 'Just bring it.' Everyone falls out laughing, and he just destroys this kid. Just destroys him. Broke his spirit and everything. He didn't know the kid really wanted to hurt him. He didn't care."
Pretty quickly, though, Banner learned his size and charisma made him a spectacle.
"In the parking lot, Zachary was doing pushups for dollars," Allen said. "He was this bigger-than-life kid. People thought he was in eighth grade. He wasn't afraid to be in a crowd, and he wasn't afraid to do anything athletic."
As a big kid with a big personality on the West Coast, Banner grew up a fan, not surprisingly, of Shaquille O'Neal.
"He was an idol for me," Banner said. "I loved how he was able to dominate on the court and off the court be a joker, be a big clown, have some fun. He made a lot of money—that seemed attractive, too. Seemed like a good dude, everyone loved him, does a lot of stuff in the community. And then he's on TNT talking about basketball.
"I'm just sitting there like, 'Dude, can I just go work out, travel the world, have fun, play at a high level, and sit on TV and talk about football?' I want to do that."
More or less, that has been Banner's approach at USC. His quotes litter the copy of USC coverage in the local press, as though he is the unofficial spokesman for the USC offense. When the Trojans had a player ejected from each of their first two games, Banner made a point in a postgame news conference of expressing disappointment in the players and defending Helton (Banner's fourth coach in five years at USC).
He's involved himself in countless community outreach events and even did a web series called "Big Man Doing Little Things" for the USC athletics website—the highlight being a scene in which he joins a class of young ballerinas and tries to do their moves.
Banner also has interned at Fox Sports for the last three years, and although that was mostly off-camera work, you can see a Strahanian resume developing here, provided he takes care of the small matter of having a legendary NFL career.
"I realize what my separation factor is going to be—having a long football career, just like Strahan did," he said. "They're not going to want a three-year-and-out type of guy. That's just not as attractive on TV, even though I'm the most attractive man in the world."
About that football career. This is Banner's third season as a starter at right tackle, and he's given up just three sacks in his time at USC. The big concerns are about his pad level and footwork, both on account of his size, but last offseason NFLDraftScout.com reported that with a good senior season, Banner could assure himself an early-round grade. And Bleacher Report's Matt Miller tweeted last spring that Banner was one of the two offensive tackles he was most excited to watch this season.
But Banner and everyone in his family acknowledge that to succeed in the NFL, he'll always have to keep close watch on his weight, a reality of his life that did not fully manifest until he quit playing basketball after his freshman year at USC. At his size, he has to gain 10 pounds before he can even feel it, and he knew he had put on a few pounds over the last couple of years, but he wasn't prepared to see the number he saw last year: 385.
"I was, like, 'I've got to chill," he said.
But there was nothing chill about it. Everything else about Banner suggested he was ready for the NFL. He had the NFL pedigree, he was first-team All-Pac 12, he had the personality of a budding politician, and the worst trouble Ron ever heard of him getting into was a lane-change violation. It was all right there for him.
Zach called Uncle Marc for counsel.
"I said, 'What do you want to do?'" Allen said.
Zach said he wanted to be an All-American at USC, and he wanted to be a first-round draft pick.
"Then you're not ready," Allen told him. "I said, 'If you would have lost the weight like I told you to, you'd maybe be in a good spot,' but he just wasn't."
That meant diet and cardio. But mainly diet. Oatmeal and a protein shake for breakfast. Same thing for lunch. When the football staff passes out boxes of fried chicken and pizza after games, Banner has to pass.
It is excruciating, he says, but for a guy who can gain five pounds just looking at a dollar menu, it's the only way.
"I told myself, 'Dude, listen, everything you put in your mouth is a million-dollar decision,'" he said. "With that being said, is it worth it to get Hawaiian barbecue right now, at 12 o'clock at night?'"
Banner lost 45 pounds over the offseason. Earlier this month, B/R's Miller projected him as the sixth-best offensive guard prospect in the 2017 draft.
"Guess what," Allen said. "He did it."
Banner's connection to Kennedy is a fact, but little more.
"Everybody knows the story about Lincoln Kennedy being my biological father," Zach said. "Thank you for bringing me in this world, but I have two really great parents.' I never really knew Lincoln like that."
Vanessa was a single mother until she married Ron when Zach was eight. Ron formally adopted Zach the next year, and that was the end of any whining or loafing or piddling around for young Zachary.
"In that household, it's one way to go," Marc said. "He had to be tough. That was the contrast with how he was before he met Ron."
Uncle Marc didn't let up, either. Zach describes Allen as a person he could talk to when he didn't want to talk to his parents, but who would check him just the same.
"He was good, but he had no choice," Allen said. "Whenever he would screw up at home, and I'd hear about it, he knew I was no safe haven."
The best place to cut up, Zach found, was on the football field, where he would dominate with his body and his mouth. One time in high school, he was across from a defensive lineman who stood a solid 6'4"—a large man in any other context—and hooting and hollering and carrying on. He was fired up. He was going to take down Goliath.
Banner stood there, watching, waiting for him to finish, and then says, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, calm down little guy, it's all right."
"This guy's own team fell out laughing," Allen said.
He had a way of lightening the mood for his own team, too.
At the beginning of Banner's senior year at Lakes High School in Lakewood, Washington, coach Dave Miller felt he had a team that might have been talented enough to get complacent. So on the first day of practice, Miller decided he was going to set the tone. Miller lays into them: Red face, spittle, the whole big scary deal that 109 times out of 110 finishes with a loud crash and is followed by a stony silence.
Not this time.
"Zach looked at me and said, 'Aw, Coach, it's all good, we got this!'" Miller said. "Most players would never say that to me."
Most players wouldn't eat lunch with the special needs students every day, either, but Miller said he saw Banner do that, too. Banner also took time to think about those kids on prom night, when he knew a lot of them wouldn't feel comfortable on the main dance floor. So he rounded up some football teammates to decorate the special needs classroom just like the rest of prom, bringing the dance to them.
He won the football team's leadership award as a sophomore, the first time Miller had ever seen that happen.
"Even when he was young, he had great perspective on the bigger picture," Miller said. "He represented our program at Lakes as well as any kid I've ever had in 32 years."
The link to East Tacoma is important to Banner, whose adoptive father took it upon himself to create a local youth sports program when the East Side Boys & Girls Club shut down because of programming changes in 2010, leaving a lot of East Side kids without a football team.
It helped that Ron Banner and Allen both played at Washington State, which offered some credibility to their efforts. But there were great players who came out of the East Side who didn't make their presence felt, and Zach knew it. He couldn't understand why he never saw any of them around.
"Jon Kitna and Lawyer Milloy, those two," Banner said. "Great football players, had great careers, both from the East Side—I never saw them. But they're both up in Bellevue throwing camps for $300 and $400, and I can't afford it. And our Boys & Girls Club gets shut down."
It irked Banner then, and he's never let it go.
"I was a 10-year-old kid hating a 30-year-old man," he said.
Over the next few years, that rage turned into a plan. When he was 15, he told his dad if he ever made it big, the East Side will never want for anything again.
"I want the kids to know," Zach said, "that I represent them every single day."
Three old-timers in USC sweaters spot Zach Banner on the steps outside Heritage Hall, one of USC Athletics' buildings. Unlike Leaks, they don't have a favor to ask. They don't really even have anything to say. They just want to say hello and soak up some Zach Banner.
"That was a great affair last night," one of them says. "I didn't know you could speak."
Banner smiles.
"You didn't do enough research," Banner replies.
He barely has that out of his mouth when he and the women's basketball coach, Cynthia Cooper-Dyke, spot each other. She starts running in his direction. Oh no. Oh dear. Oh my. She's going for a chest bump, and she's going to be bounced into orbit.
Banner does not give her the full 362 pounds. He's always been afraid of hurting his friends.
"Uhh!" she yells. "Come on!"
This all would have happened anywhere Banner chose to attend school. He almost went to Oklahoma or Washington, and if he had, he would have been a good player, and he would have been popular, and he would have cared about mentoring and East Tacoma, and he'd still have the weight thing to deal with.
But Oklahoma and Washington are no place to become the next sports media star. Not when Hollywood is an option.
So he packed up and moved to L.A. for a few years. Started his TV career, became an All-American, lost the weight. That struggle will never end for him, but he's ready.
"It feels good to know that I did this, man," Banner said. "I did this! It feels good to overcome something. It feels good to know that I'm being recognized for these types of things, because it was so hard. Everything was so hard."
That was step one. Next up is the Rose Bowl, then the NFL. Then East Tacoma.
"When I decided to come to USC, everybody from Tacoma who knew me? They knew what I was doing," he said. "They knew I'd be back."
Tully Corcoran has been working in professional journalism since 2003, covering everything from high school soccer to the NFL to the Final Four. He lives in Houston.
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