North Dallas Forty
Wide receiver Phil Elliott (Nolte) plays for a late 1960s era professional football team based in Dallas, Texas named the North Dallas Bulls, which closely resembles the Dallas Cowboys.
Though considered to possess "the best hands in the game", the aging Elliott has been benched and relies heavily on painkillers. Elliott and popular quarterback Seth Maxwell (Davis) are outstanding players, but they also characterize the drug-, sex-, and alcohol-fueled party atmosphere of that era. Elliott wants only to play the game, retire, and live on a horse farm with his girlfriend Charlotte (Dayle Haddon), who appears to be financially independent, and has no interest whatsoever in football.
The Bulls play for an iconic coach (Spradlin) who turns a blind eye to anything that his players may be doing off the field or anything that his assistant coaches and trainers condone to keep those players in the game. The Coach is focused on player "tendencies", a quantitative measurement of their performance, and seems less concerned about the human aspect of the game and the players. As one player (John Matuszak) finally erupts to a coach (Charles Durning): "Every time I call it a game, you call it a business. And every time I call it a business, you call it a game." The coaches manipulate Elliott to convince a younger, injured rookie on the team to start using painkillers.
Elliott's non-conformist attitude incurs the coach's wrath more than once, and at one point the Coach informs Elliott that his continuing attitude could affect his future with the Bulls. After the Bulls lose their final game of the season in Chicago, Elliott learns that a Dallas detective has been hired by the Bulls to follow him. They turn up proof of his marijuana use and a sexual relationship with a woman who intends to marry team executive Emmett Hunter (Dabney Coleman), brother of owner Conrad Hunter (Steve Forrest). Though the detective witnessed Quarterback Seth Maxwell engaging in similar behavior, he pretends not to have recognized him.After they tell him he is to be suspended without pay pending a league hearing, Elliott, convinced that the entire investigation is merely a pretext to allow the team to save money on his contract, quits the game of football for good.
satire, flashback