Silent movies - Brown of Harvard

Have you recovered from last week's movie?
This week I bring you "Brown of Harvard" from 1926.

First the plot (with spoilers).

Meet Tom Brown. He's handsome and athletic and his parents are proud of him going to Harvard.
The first thing Tom does there is to start flirting with a young lady in a car - daughter of a professor - the second is falling out with his roommate Bob McAndrews (that's what the intertitles say, but there are pages calling him McAndrew, maybe that was the name in the original stage play?) who's just as handsome and athletic, but also studious.

Instead Tom moves in with Jim Doolittle who's shy and weakly. Tom defends Jim against the others in the dormitory and Jim idolizes him.

William Haines and Jack Pickford
as Tom and Jim

Tom meets Mary again and a rivalry develops between him and Bob over her which escalates when Tom forces a kiss on her.

No means no!

They continue their rivalry in sports, first rowing. Tom replaces Bob after an injury, but fails after a night of heavy drinking over Mary. He decides not to go back to Harvard after the vacation, but his father convinces him to go back if he loves Mary (the old "wear her out" tactics) and also to take up football instead of rowing.

On the day of the big Harvard-Yale game, Jim is lying in bed with a cold. Because of a newspaper article, Tom thinks he's not on the squad, but right after he leaves to pick up his parents, the coach calls setting an ultimatum of 20 minutes or Tom will be off the squad for good.
Of course Jim runs out into the heavy rain to let Tom know and he even hangs on to the streetcar to stop it which ends him up in hospital.

During the football game, Tom hurts his ankle, but when another player hurts himself, he goes back into the game and gains 90 yards before letting Bob make the crucial touchdown. Take that, John Wayne! Indeed this was John Wayne's film debut as a Yale football player, he was uncredited, and I didn't even notice him.

As Tom comes to the hospital to tell Jim, the nurse comes out of the room crying. Jim has died and Tom has a breakdown. But luckily Mary arrives and can comfort him.

The film ends with "The Dickey" (a private social club at Harvard) picking up Tom for a parade as one of the best men of the year, along with Bob.

This is the third "Brown of Harvard" film based on a Broadway play from 1906.

The movie was very popular and "helped" Haines getting typecast in the role of the wisecracking young man who finally gets his life together until the audience tired of that.
I'm already tired of it after just one movie.
While I readily admit that Haines played the role well, I find Tom utterly annoying, and not being a sports fan, I don't think winning a football game, no matter how important, is enough to forgive everything. He behaves "rotten to a very fine girl" (his own words to Jim), not once but twice, and when he doesn't get what he wants, he's like a toddler throwing a tantrum. I always hated that "boys will be boys" excuse.
To be honest, I would have been fine with Bob and Mary getting together.

If she doesn't walk back to the store with me
so I can spend more time with her, I'll
just smash the eggs, jam, and milk and
then she will have to go back.

Haha, what a hilarious idea. Not.
It didn't work, either.

I guess there's the fact that he's quite kind and caring towards Jim. The scene where he rubs liniment on sick Jim's chest is genuinely nice. The scene in which he learns of Jim's death is dramatic, but overacted in my opinion.

Another reason why this movie doesn't work for me is the football game. I have watched sports films, but the sports scenes can't be too long or I get bored. Also I'm not a fan of the "rah rah rah" atmosphere.
It might work for others, well, it obviously did and still does, but I was already too annoyed by Tom.
I will be watching other Billy Haines movies, we'll see if I will like them any better.