Pete Gent was one of the most interesting characters in the world of sports. He was a basketball star in college, never played college football, yet went on to have a career as a receiver for the Dallas Cowboys.
He wrote the book “North Dallas Forty” which exposed the ugly underbelly of pro football. The movie was also very good.
Here’s his NY Times obit:
After that book came out, Don Meredith offered the best take: “Wow, if I’d known Peter Gent was so good, I’d have thrown to him a lot more.”
RIP as well. His book to me was the “Ball Four” of professional football. When i read it as a kid I never realized that these guys i watched on sundays were human beings full of failures and flaws…
Some year ago I was next to Jethro Pugh in a buffet line. We got to talking. I mentioned Pete Gent. Big old Jethro, who was about 7 stories tall, got a smile on his face, looked down on me, and said something like, “Pete was a free spirit. But they would send him across the middle and he would get absolutely hammered and still hang on to the ball.” IIRC, Pete recounts the sensation of catching a pass when crossing the middle and getting clobbered by the defense in his book.
Pete was not an “All-Pro”. Yet, he somehow carved out a career in professional football even though he never played football in college. It makes you realize that those were very different days from today.
Pete was a free thinker, the “hippie” player of his time. That didn’t endear him to everyone but he didn’t exploit his maverick status. He just said what he thought or wrapped it in a novel where the characters were thinly veiled. That upset a lot of people. Yet, he lived his life, mostly in obscurity, in his hometown. If anything, he deflected attention rather than attracting it.