Elliott wants only to play the game, retire, and live on a horse farm with his girlfriend Charlotte, an aspiring writer who appears to be financially independent due to a trust fund from her wealthy family and who has no interest whatsoever in football.

Part drama, comedy, and satire, North Dallas Forty is widely considered a classic sports film, giving insights into the lives of professional athletes.

[5] Based on the semiautobiographical novel by Peter Gent, a Cowboys wide receiver in the late 1960s, the film's characters closely resemble team members of that era, with Seth Maxwell often compared to quarterback Don Meredith, B.A.

In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote "The central friendship in the movie, beautifully delineated, is the one between Mr. Nolte and Mac Davis, who expertly plays the team's quarterback, a man whose calculating nature and complacency make him all the more likable, somehow.

[8] Newsweek magazine's David Ansen wrote "The writers – Kotcheff, Gent and producer Frank Yablans – are nonetheless to be congratulated for allowing their story to live through its characters, abjuring Rocky-like fantasy configurations for the harder realities of the game.

"[9] However, in his review for The Globe and Mail, Rick Groen wrote "North Dallas Forty descends into farce and into the lone man versus the corrupt system mentality deprives it of real resonance.

"[10] Sports Illustrated magazine's Frank Deford wrote "If North Dallas Forty is reasonably accurate, the pro game is a gruesome human abattoir, worse even than previously imagined.

The site's critical consensus states: "Muddled overall, but perceptive and brutally realistic, North Dallas Forty also benefits from strong performances by Nick Nolte and Charles Durning.

Hall of Famer Tom Fears, who advised on the movie's football action, had scouting contracts with three NFL teams – all were canceled after the film opened, reported Jane Leavy and Tony Kornheiser in a September 6, 1979, Washington Post article.

[16] The novel highlights the relationship between the violent world of professional football with the violence inherent in the social structures and cultural mores of late 1960s American life, using a simulacrum of America's Team and the most popular sport in the United States as the metaphorical central focus.

Throughout the novel there is more graphic sex and violence, as well as drug and alcohol abuse without the comic overtones of the film; for instance, the harassment of an unwilling girl at a party that is played for laughs in the movie is a brutal near-rape at an orgy in the novel.