Peter Gent is a former Michigan State University basketball player and National Football League wide receiver turned novelist. He was born George Davis Gent on August 23, 1942 in Bangor, Michigan.
Gent played for the Dallas Cowboys football team from 1964 to 1968. After leaving the team, he wrote a semi-autobiographical novel titled North Dallas Forty, published in 1973, which exposed the seamier side of American football. Some focus is given to hypocrisy regarding drug use, as heavy use of painkillers is recklessly encouraged to keep players on the field but personal use of marijuana and narcotics is frowned on. The book was made into a movie of the same name in 1979 and starred Nick Nolte and Mac Davis.
Gent also examined the corruption deriving from the huge sums of money involved in modern professional sports in a sequel volume entitled North Dallas After 40, published in 1989, and in an unrelated football novel The Franchise, published in 1983.
