In an interview on American Football (and its Dark Side)

Which was the next book I wanted to ask about. First published in 1973, it seems like a more serious novel about the seamy side of football. Please introduce us to the book and its author, a former wide receiver, Peter Gent.

Even though the team in the book is called by another name, it’s obviously about the Cowboys. North Dallas is where the Cowboys were located and Forty refers to the 40-man team roster. It’s barely fiction. The book gets a little confused at the end but the first half of it is absolutely brilliant.

It’s about a main character who is a wide receiver – it’s clearly Pete Gent but he’s called Seth Maxwell. Everybody has a pseudonym, but you can tell who’s who. Seth Maxwell becomes more and more disillusioned with all the drug taking and all of the incredible immorality of the players – the guns, the lying, the cheating, the abuse and rape of women. And he finds it harder to manage the incredible amount of pain he endures from what he does on the field. Players are being used almost like gladiators, until they’re of no use to anybody any more. The main character finally comes to the realisation that the only way he can get relief is to leave.

One reviewer wrote that this book let’s you know what it feels like to play the game. Does it leave you aching?

Yeah. He describes getting up in the morning as a process that takes maybe an hour – easing into a hot tub, slowly stretching certain joints and then taking a bunch of painkilling drugs. It’s horrible – almost hard to read. I talked to Pete Gent one time and asked him, “Was it like that when you got up in the morning?” And he told me, “Yeah.” I know it’s true for many players.

We’re coming to realise how crippled and tortured and pummelled these players become, that joints and bones pay a price. And now we know, more and more, what happens inside the head. We see suicides, early onset Alzheimer’s, Lou Gehrig’s disease, loss of memory. So many players in their late forties and fifties and certainly by their sixties are mentally and physically incapacitated from playing the game in their twenties.

Pete Gent wrote about that before others did and, of course, when you write things like this, when you tell a truth nobody wants to hear, you’re ostracised. And he was. He was considered an outcast. He was considered a whistle-blower. He was attacked personally and ridiculed. Sadly, Pete Gent just died. I wish he was alive to see that people are finally paying attention to the things he gave warnings of.

The medicine chests of Gent’s characters are filled with uppers and painkillers. Was football that drug-dependant and is it still?

Yes. When you tackle somebody with your shoulder it’s as if you rammed your shoulder in a wall, so there’s going to be bruising and inflammation and slight dislocation of things on every play. Every hit in the NFL is the equivalent of what a normal person will go through in a minor car wreck. So you have to do something.

So there are players who admit to taking drugs and there are those who say they don’t, but are lying. You’re masking pain all the time. You have to play in pain. Somehow people think it’s OK for these guys to get the shots, the numbing shots and the anti-inflammatory shots. Tramadol shots, which is the new rage, they get all the time, routinely, every game. And we know that. Whether you’re a Bears fan or a Giants fan, whoever you root for, they’re all getting shots, they’re all taking pills while they’re playing, and when they’re done they’re left with the pain and addictions.