Football, Play and Obsession

Football, Play and Obsession

Unlike most books by former athletes, Dallas Cowboy wide receiver Peter Gent’s North Dallas Forty is anything but a modest “I was there” piece of writing. Although structured around eight days in the life of Phil Elliott (like Gent, a wide leceiver), North Dallas Forty is really a survey of the 1960s from the point of view of a football player whose lifestyle—particularly his opposition to the Vietnam War and his fondness for grass—has put him in conflict with the team he plays for. In Gent’s novel, Elliott’s struggle to maintain his independence and stay in a game he loves is a heroic, losing battle; in the end black comedy and murder dominate his story, as the woman Elliott loves is murdered by a psychotic fan and Elliott’s “Bad Attitude” leads his coach to bench him and finally the team owner to force him out of the league on trumped-up drug charges.

By contrast, director Ted Kotcheff’s North D...