[1] The book follows a cynical college football quarterback's rise to superstardom in the professional ranks with a corrupt expansion team, whom he leads to a championship.

While it shared some of the themes of Gent's 1973 novel, North Dallas Forty, The Franchise adds political corruption and murder.

Rusk sees him get tossed aside and, due largely to steroid abuse, he murders his family and commits suicide.

Kirkus Reviews called the "overlong" novel "a noisy, messy, unconvincing mixture of black comedy, shrill soap opera, and violent, bloody mystery-melodrama.

"[2] The Washington Post wrote that "underlying the good-ol'-boy humor and Ludlum-like violence, there is a seriousness, a feeling that Gent, as he did in North Dallas Forty, could be revealing something that the National Football League would rather we did not know.