FLAGGED FOR NECESSARY ROUGHNESS.

Byline: David Kronke TV Critic

ESPN's SECOND in-house movie, ``The Junction Boys,'' is a good, old-fashioned wallow in testosterone, piles upon piles of it, a ``Band of Brothers'' of college sports. The guy who'd be the villain in most simpering, politically correct dramas of today is the hero, and the guy who'd be the hero is silenced well enough by a couple of shots of fine whiskey.

Tom Berenger stars as Paul ``Bear'' Bryant, who would go on to a legendary career with the University of Alabama's Crimson Tide. As ``The Junction Boys'' opens in the summer of 1954, however, he's early in his career, becoming coach of Texas A&M's Aggies.

With the zeal that George Patton might have admired, he takes his charges - 111 of them - to the remote outback of Junction, Texas, to toughen them up. By the time he's done, only 35 would return as members of the team.

And no wonder - he subjects them to torture that a might give a war hero like John McCain pause. He forces his team members to play football, dawn to dusk in temperatures easily vaulting over 100 degrees, on a field strewn with gravel and burrs and fire ants. He bullies a player with a serious back injury into returning to the field. He boots one of his boys dying of heat stroke. His boys puke every few minutes. And he mocks them mercilessly all the way through.

In short, he emerges as a major reason personal-injury attorneys exist as the army they are today.

Of course, his boys learn to love him for it. And - given that this is a 2002 movie - he seems to learn the error of his ways.

You wonder: If the offense is succeeding and he's brutalizing the defense, and vice versa, a couple of these bull-headed jocks just might realize this megalomaniac is bullying guys unwilling to sacrifice their bodies so he can build his reputation on their blood. At one point, Bryant even concedes to the doctor who says he's risking their well-being, ``If these boys don't play balls-out, they're endangerin' my life.''

Still, ``The Junction Boys'' represents an exponential improvement on ESPN's first film, the abysmal ``A Season on the Brink,'' which lacked every element of plotting and pacing every movie preceding it had established. Berenger is decent as the bull-headed Bear, and if the boys in the team are characterized sketchily, the story is related in an occasionally compelling fashion.

Its ruthless machismo may put off some viewers - and its sappy music during its unconvincing sensitive moments will put off far more - but its depiction of the win-at-all-costs sensibility of Texas football can be, at times, utterly convincing.

THE JUNCTION BOYS - Two and one half stars

What: Docudrama about win-at-all-costs college-football coach ``Bear'' Bryant and his aspiring team members.

Where: ESPN.

When: 9 tonight.

In a nutshell: Well-acted depiction of masochistic machismo.

CAPTION(S):

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Photo:

Tom Berenger, second from right, stars as legendary football coach Paul ``Bear'' Bryant in ESPN's ``The Junction Boys.''