The premier award for assistant coaches in college football has narrowed down its list.

The Broyles Award which has been given to the top assistant coach in the country every year since 1996 has decided on five finalists.

This included Tennessee football defensive coordinator Tim Banks.

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The other four coaches are Arizona State offensive coordinator Marcus Arroyo, Indiana defensive coordinator Bryant Haines, Notre Dame defensive coordinator Al Golden and Texas defensive coordinator Pete Kwiatkowski.

The Vols have one previous winner to take home the award. David Cutcliffe earned it in 1998 as the Tennessee associate head coach, offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach. He took the Ole Miss head coaching job the following year.

The award will be presented on Feb. 13 in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Banks boasts one of the top defenses in the country. His unit has the fourth-best scoring defense in the country at just 13.92 allowed points per game. It also is the fourth-best total defense while allowing 278.2 yards per contest.

Through the air, Tennessee ranks 17th in the country with 178.7 yards allowed per game. on the ground, it is eighth at 99.6 yards per match.

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Banks played college football at Central Michigan as a defensive back from 1991-1994. In 1996, he joined Bowling Green as a graduate assistant to get his coaching career started.

He coached defensive backs at Ferris State before returning to Bowling Green to be the running backs coach in 1999 and defensive backs coach in 2000.

Then, Banks went to Memphis where he coached outside linebackers for a year before coaching the Tigers' defensive backs the following season.

From 2003-2005, he coached inside linebackers at Maryland before coaching the Terrapins' defensive backs in 2006.

After that, he got his first defensive coordinator job at his alma mater. He was the DC with Central Michigan from 2007-2009 which led to him becoming co-defensive coordinator and defensive backs coach at Cincinnati from 2010-2011.

He would transition to the Big Ten after that, being employed by Illinois as defensive coordinator and defensive backs coach from 2012-2015. Penn State hired him as co-defensive coordinator and safeties coach from 2016-2020.

From there, he accepted Josh Heupel's offer to be defensive coordinator and safeties coach in 2021 where he has remained since.

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