Born and raised in Los Angeles, California, Davidson was the son of Avis (née Wheat) and Benjamin Earl Franklin, Senior.

He was subsequently recruited to play at the University of Washington in Seattle in 1959, where he flourished as a member of consecutive Rose Bowl-winning teams under head coach Jim Owens and gained entry into professional football.

Davidson was selected in the fourth round of the 1961 NFL draft by the New York Giants, but was traded in training camp to the Green Bay Packers.

[6] As a rookie, he played mostly special teams for the Packers in 1961, who beat the Giants 37–0 in the championship game, the first of five NFL titles for head coach Vince Lombardi.

[10] On November 1, 1970, after the AFL-NFL merger, the defending champion Kansas City Chiefs led the Raiders 17–14 late in the fourth quarter.

Davidson's play not only cost the Chiefs a win, but Oakland won the AFC West with a season record of 8–4–2, while Kansas City finished 7–5–2 and out of the playoffs.

He also appeared in the short lived 1976 show Ball Four as a minor-league baseball player named Rhino Rhinelander, the 1977 pilot for Lucan and the 1984 TV movie Goldie and the Bears.

In a 1978 first-season episode of CHiPs, "Hitch-Hiking Hitch", Davidson played a character known as Wrestler who picked up and moved a VW Bug and two CHP motorcycles to clear a parking space for his truck.

Following his rookie season with Green Bay, Davidson took his winner's check ($5,195) from the 1961 NFL title game and bought rental property in Seattle, beginning a lifelong and successful focus on residential real estate.