“Coming of Age in the Locker Room,” a lengthy feature about players and ex-players.
A report from Super Bowl X
Gregory Curtis, September 1979
…the best movie ever made about professional football and one of the better movies ever made about sports
A review of Gent’s second novel, Texas Celebrity Turkey Trot
Full page ad for Gent’s third novel, The Franchise
Don Graham, December 1999 (our “Best of the Texas Century” issue)
At the same time that Gent vividly details the inner workings of a pro football organization, he also captures a Dallas still living in the shadow of the Kennedy assassination, a city that is reactionary in social and racial policies but one that is also undergoing an explosion of economic growth in a state that is rapidly giving way to urbanization. Gent’s depiction of the clash between America’s Team and a counterculture fueled by drugs, music, and opposition to the war in Vietnam makes his book a window on that period of our culture. And though his indictment of team doctors who cavalierly administered painkillers and players who were given to off-field instances of drug use and physical violence seemed shocking at the time, subsequent years of sensational headlines about the behavior of some athletes have made North Dallas Forty seem both accurate and prophetic.
