AUSTIN, Texas — Doctors told Big Kelvin his wife would not survive.
We’re just trying to make her feel comfortable.
A few months ago, in the spring of this year, Kelvin Banks Sr. heard those words as the mother of his children lay sedated and connected to a respirator.
For months, Monica Banks suffered from the disease, which required her to go to the hospital every two weeks for fluids and more fruitless tests. She was incapacitated, almost completely unable to speak or walk, and in so much pain that she was practically forced to stay in bed, while her body fought an invisible and mysterious monster.
No one knew why she was sick or how to treat the illness.
These were difficult times, especially for her 20-year-old son, who was studying at university.
In fact, until recently, Kelvin Banks Jr. avoided talking about his mother’s health, keeping his thoughts to himself, perhaps suppressing them deep inside. Outwardly, he was smiling, happy and shining on the University of Texas offensive line.
Inside, he was crazy.
“I didn’t let people know how I felt,” he says. “I could sense that I was angry at others for something they hadn’t done.”
All this is now a thing of the past.
As she sits here at the Texas football facility, telling her story publicly for the first time, Monica Banks is on the mend. She attended her first Texas football game last weekend — the season-opening 52-0 win over Colorado State — without any serious health issues for the first time since her son’s freshman season in 2022.
She watched as her son pushed an inferior opponent. If you don’t know who Kelvin Banks Jr. is, you haven’t been paying enough attention. Protect your opponent’s blind side. other Projected first-round NFL Draft pick: quarterback Quinn Ewers.
While much of the attention is focused on Ewers, the man blocking for him is in the midst of one of the most remarkable college careers for any player: Kelvin Banks has started every game of his college career at left tackle, one of the most difficult and important positions on the football field.
This has an added benefit: If you’re part of history as a left tackle, chances are you’ve made a terrible mistake. Failures are amplified more than successes.
For the most part, Kelvin is not part of the story.
“Whenever someone comes to me and asks, ‘Coach, what do I do and how do I do it?’ I say, ‘Be like Kelvin,’” Texas coach Steve Sarkisian said.
Incredibly athletic for his 6-foot-5, 300-pound frame (his high school coach said he had moves like a point guard as a ninth-grade basketball player), Kelvin is a big, physically imposing player who is absolutely mean on the football field.
Outside of work, he’s a humble, barbecue-loving 20-year-old teddy bear with a persistent smile.
His athletic abilities come from his father, Big Kelvin, a heavy-duty truck driver who competed in football beyond college, at the stadium level.
But his physique? His aggressiveness? That comes from his mother.
“When I couldn’t play a game, he’d call me and say, ‘You better get those guys on the ground!'” Kelvin Jr. said.
At last week’s game, Monica used a wheelchair as she continues to learn to walk, a result of her illness. Doctors eventually found the catalyst, a leaky gallbladder that was filling her body with toxins. Over the summer, she had her gallbladder removed in a life-saving surgery.
The woman who gives Kelvin Banks Jr. his inspiration, the person who instills in him that unpleasant game of leveling the playing field in football, that person, his mother, is finally sane.
Given her situation just a few months ago and considering a lifetime of other ailments, it’s hard to believe. Before her gallbladder problems, Monica Banks underwent brain surgery to remove a small portion of her temporal lobe to relieve her epileptic seizures.
Eight years ago, Monica suffered a seizure while driving with her two sons, Kelvin Jr. and his brother Jalen; fortunately, her vehicle made it through a busy intersection undamaged. Four years later, she was not so lucky. While driving alone, Monica crashed into a garbage truck, a collision that left her with a broken hip and a severed neck.
“Most people would have died from what I went through,” Monica said. “I was in a coma twice in the hospital and my family was told I was going to die.”
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Perspective is important. This Saturday, Kelvin Banks Jr. will play one of the biggest games of his career when Texas (No. 3) takes on Michigan (No. 10) in college football’s biggest Week 2 matchup.
While it may seem like a matter of life or death — a showdown between two of the biggest brands in football — it isn’t. Monica, who can’t fly because of her condition, will watch the game from the family home in Humble, Texas. Kelvin Banks Sr. plans to travel to Ann Arbor to watch his youngest son compete on one of the biggest stages in sports — at the Big House, in a nationally televised game at noon on FOX.
The matchup is made for television: arguably the most historic powerhouses in college football from the sport’s two most powerful leagues, each a College Football Playoff participant a year ago. In the game-within-the-game, there’s also plenty at stake: Kelvin, a top-10 NFL draft pick, against a Michigan defensive front that features a bevy of NFL talent, including tackle Mason Graham.
Kelvin, of course, is used to the big stage and the most highly touted opponents. As a freshman in 2022, his second start, he faced No. 1 Alabama and defensive phenoms like Will Anderson and Dallas Turner.
What’s surprising about this, Sarkisian said, is that Texas signed seven offensive linemen in the 2022 class, his first full recruiting class as a coach. Of the seven, all but one enrolled in early January of that year.
“In June, during the summer, there was only one player that came in, and that was Kelvin,” Sarkisian said. “Inevitably, he turns around and ends up starting his first game as a freshman.”
Three years later, he’s the central member of a Texas offensive line that returns all but one starter from one of the nation’s top units last season. They’ve made 123 career starts combined. The Texas line is a tight-knit group — all 20 players, including non-scholarship entrants — play together and host monthly dinners. In total, they can devour about 400 chicken wings (20 per player) in a single sitting.
On the field, Kelvin stands apart from his peers and everyone else nationally. He hasn’t missed a start in Austin. This weekend, he’ll make his 29th consecutive start. As it turns out, Kelvin hasn’t missed a game at left tackle in the past five years. He started 34 games at left tackle in high school from his sophomore year on. It should have been more, said Kenny Harrison, the head coach at Summer Creek High in the Houston metro area.
Kelvin was unable to play on the varsity team when he was in ninth grade due to Texas high school transfer policies. So during his ninth grade year, he served as a scout team lineman for varsity players.
“He was better than any lineman we played against all season,” Harrison said with a laugh.
Kelvin returns home to Houston quite often, mostly to see his mother, but also to ride his ATV and “go out in the mud,” he said. He also enjoys fishing and loves barbecue so much that he has considered eating it during an actual game.
“Call a time-out and grab a piece of ribs,” he laughs.
But football is his first love. More specifically, blocking in football is his first love. Even more specifically, crushing an opponent and leaving him lying on the ground, like this.
She inherited that unpleasant mentality, of course, from her mother.
Although Monica is healthier than she has been in years, she will never be perfect. Kelvin knows this. Despite her epileptic brain surgery, her seizures are limited, not eliminated. If she endures too much stress, Monica is prone to more seizures, and for now at least, she is bound to that wheelchair.
Kelvin can talk about it now. For him, that is a big step.
“I used to be the kind of person who dealt with it on my own, who was strong,” she said, “but as I got older and more mature, I realized it was okay to feel a certain way. That’s the most important part of my growth from when I was young to now. Not letting things build up. I just needed to get things off my chest.”
He talks to his father, his coach, his brother and even his teammates. Now he shares his story with the world.
On Saturday, when the Longhorns take on the Wolverines, he knows a healthy mother will be watching at home, cheering him on and quietly whispering, “Get those boys in the dirt!”
