Peter Gent

Gent attended Bangor High School in Michigan, where he was a standout four-sport athlete (football, basketball, baseball and track). In basketball he led the Bangor Vikings team to the 1960 state Class C Championship, while accumulating a 22.6 scoring average.[4] The team was known as the Cardiac Kids for their late-game wins in District, Regional, Quarter-Final and Semi-Final games. The final game against top-ranked Grand Rapids Lee was no exception: it was tied 41–41 after three quarters and Bangor went on to win 57–45. Gent led the team with 21 points, and was named to the All-Tourney Team which was chosen from schools of all sizes throughout the state.[5]

Gent was a center/forward with the Michigan State University basketball team from 1962 to 1964. He became the first player in school history to lead the basketball team in scoring three consecutive seasons. In his senior year, he averaged 21 points per game. He left school ranked as MSU's second career scorer, with a total of 1,146 points. He averaged 17.4 points per game for his college career, he was third team All-Big Ten in 1963 and second team All-Big Ten in 1964.[6]

In 1964, he was awarded the Big Ten Conference Medal of Honor, which is given annually to a male and female athlete at each of the Big Ten institutions, who demonstrates the greatest proficiency in scholarship and athletics.[7] Gent graduated from Michigan State University with a BA in advertising.

Gent was the recipient of the 2005 Distinguished Alumnus Award.

After leaving professional football, Gent wrote several novels dealing with the sport. His first and most famous book, a semi-autobiographical novel entitled North Dallas Forty, was published in 1973. Its main characters, a quarterback and a wide receiver, are widely considered to be based on Don Meredith and Gent, respectively.[13] The novel was one of the first to examine the NFL's hypocrisy regarding drug use.

North Dallas Forty was made into a movie of the same name in 1979 starring Nick Nolte, Mac Davis, G. D. Spradlin, and Dayle Haddon. Gent wrote the screenplay for the film. During the making of the film, he experienced creative difficulties with producer Frank Yablans.[14] After seeing the movie, his old friend and teammate Meredith commented, "If I'd known Gent was as good as he says he was, I would have thrown to him more."[15]

Gent made his home in Texas for many years, where he was friends with many of that state's significant creative minds of the day, including Larry L. King, Billy Lee Brammer, Gary Cartwright, Bud Shrake, Jerry Jeff Walker, and Dan Jenkins. They called themselves the Mad Dogs.

Gent also explored the corruption in modern professional sports in a sequel volume entitled North Dallas After 40,[16] published in 1989, and in two unrelated football novels — Texas Celebrity Turkey Trot (1979) and The Franchise (1983).

Gent also wrote a novel about college basketball entitled The Conquering Heroes (1994). Bill Walton’s cover blurb states that the book is the "North Dallas Forty of college basketball. But it’s much more, it’s about a whole generation of kids who came of age in an America that I grew up in."[17]

Gent had two children, Holly Gent and Carter Davis Gent. He resided in Bangor, Michigan at the time of his death from a pulmonary disease on September 30, 2011,[6] and was working on another novel.[18]