Pete Gent, R. I. P.

iWon News - 'North Dallas Forty' author dies in Michigan: The seamier side of professional football was exposed by former NFL player Peter Gent's "North Dallas Forty," the 1973 novel that became a sports movie classic depicting the drugs, sex, greed and self-preservation of the game.

Gent had an unlikely five-season career playing for Dallas before penning the story loosely based on the Cowboys. It later became a movie, nestled between comedy and tragedy, showing the drinking and drugging by thinly disguised football characters.

Gent, who died Friday at his boyhood home in western Michigan, seemed pleased with how the movie turned out but usually didn't watch it years later, his son said Saturday. Gent went on to write several more books.

Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.