At Bangor High School, Gent led the Bangor Vikings basketball team to the 1960 State Championship. The team was known as the Cardiac Kids for their late-game wins in District, Regional, Quarter-Final and Semi-Final games. This final game was no exception, it was tied 41-41 after three quarters. Bangor went on to win 57-45. Peter Gent led the team with 21 points, and was named to the All-Tourney Team which was chosen from schools of all sizes throughout the state.

Gent was a center/forward with the Michigan State University basketball team 1962-64. He led the team in scoring three consecutive seasons. In his senior year, he averaged 21 points per game. He is currently 22nd on the list of MSU's top career scorers, with a total of 1146 points. That's 17.4 points per game for his college career.

Gent graduated from Michigan State with a BA in Advertising.

He was drafted in the tenth round by the NBA-Baltimore Bullets. On a lark, Gent went to the Dallas Cowboys training camp in the summer of 1964. He had heard they were paying $500 to players who attended the training camp.

Gent wound up making the team, where he was a receiver and tight end from 1964 to 1968. He was known for his soft hands and caught many passes from quarterback Don Meredith, with whom he enjoyed a close friendship off the field.

He never played a down of college football, so the Cowboys started him at split end and in 1968 moved him to tight end.

In the Cowboys' 1965 season, Gent caught 16 passes for 233 yards and 2 touchdowns. In 1966, he had 27 receptions for 474 yards (averaging 17.6 yard per catch). In 1967 and 1968, Gent had 25 receptions. He was traded to the New York Giants in 1969, but never played there.

After leaving professional football, Gent wrote a semi-autobiographical novel titled North Dallas Forty. Many have hypothesized that the main characters of the book, a quarterback and a receiver, are based on Gent and Don Meredith. The novel, published in 1973, exposed the seamier side of American football. Often regarded as one of the finest sports novels ever written, the novel examines the NFL's hypocrisy regarding drug use...as heavy use of painkillers is recklessly encouraged to keep players on the field but personal use of marijuana and narcotics is frowned on. The book was made into a movie of the same name in 1979 starring Nick Nolte, Mac Davis, G.D. Spradlin, and Dayle Haddon. Gent wrote the screenplay for the film. He had epic creative battles with legendary producer Frank Yablans on the set of the film.

Gent made his home in Texas for many years, where he was friends with many of the great creative minds of the day, including Larry L. King, Billy Lee Brammer, Gary Cartwright, Bud Shrake, Jerry Jeff Walker and Dan Jenkins. They called themselves the Mad Dogs.

Gent also examined the corruption deriving from the huge sums of money involved in modern professional sports in a sequel volume entitled North Dallas After 40, published in 1989, and in an unrelated football novel The Franchise, published in 1983.

Gent has two children, Holly Gent Palmo, b. 1963; and Carter Davis Gent, b. 1976. He resides in Bangor, Michigan and is currently working on a novel.