Edgerrin James is the truth, and he'll give it to you undistilled. He doesn't much care whether you like how it sounds. You agree? Cool. You don't? He never knew you anyway. It's his truth, and it's non-negotiable, so he doesn't have much use for anyone massaging his message so that it gets out in a way that really isn't his way at all. That's why he does so few interviews. That, and he isn't real big on talk. He agreed to talk now because we allowed him to do so without a filter, just him talking to you -- the same raw, real way he did when he was on The Magazine's cover two years ago (Sept. 4, 2000).

	What motivates Edgerrin James?

What follows are his words. In the fourth year of a seven-year, $49 million contract, James is unhappy with the incentive-laden nature of his deal, and says so with his usual honesty. After leading the NFL in rushing his first two seasons, James disappeared from public view after tearing knee ligaments in last season's fifth game. He hadn't said much of anything since -- to the media or to the Colts -- until he reported for training camp in late July. I interviewed him for three hours before he left for camp, from midnight to 3 a.m., while he worked out in the gym of his South Florida condo. Those are the hours he keeps in the off-season. --D.L.

***

Either way, one of us was gonna be mad. And it sure as hell wasn't gonna be me. My coach, Jim Mora, wanted me to just get the first down in a game against Detroit a couple seasons ago [Oct. 29, 2000]. Fall down and run out the clock. But I've got too many incentive clauses in my contract for that. Every yard is money, man. So I started laughing in the huddle when I heard what Coach wanted. And then I kept running past that first-down marker until I had my touchdown. And I heard a cash register ringing the whole damn way, too. Coach was mad as a mother, but how mad can your coach really be when you score a touchdown for him? I know the haters think that's selfish, and I understand that. But I've got a contract that forces me to be selfish. That's why I want to renegotiate. You want to change my attitude? Then change my contract. Because I lost $3.875 million in incentives last season when my knee exploded, and the haters weren't crying for me then.

Let the haters get down there in goal-line situations and feel what I have to feel to make my money, and then we can talk about selfish. Look at my hands, man. I dislocate my fingers during a play, and I pop them back into place on the field -- even though they are all messed up, like spaghetti -- because I need to stay in the game every play. I'm not going to the sidelines if there's money on that field. I'm always happy when we win, but I'm not gonna be as happy when we win and I get 40 yards as I'm gonna be if we win and I get 100. If it's a blowout and the choice is between staying in bounds and keeping the clock going, or going out of bounds and getting more carries, I'm going after my yards.

I'm sorry if you don't like it, but I'm not gonna duck and dodge the issue. I'm gonna give it to you raw. Worrying about incentives all the time, that takes away the fun. I've got to be looking at my stats all the time. I like this game, but I can't keep playing under these circumstances.

My body is gonna be all broke up when I'm done. How much are a person's legs worth? We're not the only ones making money here, you know? There are a whole lot of people making money off us, and they ain't risking their knees. I get hurt last season and miss a bunch of games, and I lose $3.875 million? Hell, yeah, that bothers me.

Look at these players who can barely walk when they're done playing. That's gonna be me, so I've got to squeeze everything I can out of this now. We're not guaranteed the money in our contracts like basketball and baseball players are. I ain't hating on nobody in baseball, but I know I'm speaking for every NFL player when I say it ain't right the best baseball player [Alex Rodriguez] gets $252 million and our best player, Marshall Faulk, just signed for $200 million less than that. Ain't no crazy 300-pounders trying to break no baseball player's legs. And Marshall's money ain't even guaranteed, man.

This is a temporary game, and I got a whole family I gotta hold up. A big family, too. Real big. I don't even know how many brothers and sisters I have. For real. Grandma had 13 kids, and a lot of them were boys and they had a lot more kids, so I don't know how many nieces, nephews and cousins I have, either. But I know they need my help, my money. That's why I've got the bankers at my house every Monday, telling me where every dollar is.

How many people am I supporting? I don't know. A lot. And my biggest fear in the world is going broke and having to depend on someone else again. You watch Tyson fighting, and he says he has to fight because he's broke, and that's flat crazy. I don't want to be chasing money the rest of my life. I don't want to be like my granddaddy, working all day at 77 years old and then dropping dead that night. I got a saying -- when your outgo exceeds your income, then your upkeep becomes your downfall.

But I got three brothers in jail for allegedly shooting into an occupied dwelling, and I'm always putting up so much bond money I should start me a bail bondsmen service. I don't want to see friends or family locked up, and I don't want to be a parent to everyone, but I gotta give the people around me what I didn't have.

We couldn't even afford to buy school pictures when I was young. I never celebrated Christmas. If I needed a bike, I'd steal it, repaint it and make it my bike. Merry Christmas. I want everyone around me to have a better life than that.

	The Sept. 4, 2000, cover story.

That's why my Reebok contract is set up to give me more merchandise than money -- so I can call up anytime and have them send kids back home the kind of stuff I could never have. That's why I set up my foundation to give money to the Immokalee, Fla., Pop Warner league and high school. Y'all can join the James Gang at www.daedge.com.

I'm always around kids. Grownups, you have to hear their problems all day, but kids just want to have fun, and I always let them be themselves. They get yelled at and run off by the old people in our neighborhood, so sometimes I'll fill a van with Immokalee kids and we'll just roll. We stopped by Daunte Culpepper's house this off-season. The kids wanted to meet him, so I just drove up with a van full of them, rang his doorbell, and they got to hang with No.11. I took a bunch of them to Universal Studios in Orlando before training camp, too. We always stay at an Embassy Suites because the breakfast is free. I give each of the kids $20 apiece to run around on our trips, but they gotta work for it. I ain't giving them nothing for free.

I bought a rundown place in the main drug area in Immokalee and fixed it up so the kids have a place to chill. We call it the Fun House. I hooked it up. Video games. PlayStation. Xbox. Big screen. Pool table. Cards. Kitchen. I let the kids spray-paint it, too. Everyone was using Grandma's house, and she couldn't watch her stories on TV, so I had to get the kids their own place.

The crackheads don't mess with the stuff inside. They know it's mine, and they respect that, just like they respect my cars when I'm down there.

I go to the Fun House all the time. I got up there one time at like 4 a.m., and it was empty. When I woke up a few hours later, there were kids sleeping all over the floor. They didn't want to wake me up with the video games, so they just went to sleep around me and waited.

I know there are a lot of people who don't want me hanging there, but nobody is going to tell me who my friends should be, not when my friends were around before the Colts, the NFL or anyone else. I'm always surrounded by people who would go to war for me.

I missed voluntary camps and a mandatory training camp this off-season, and people thought it was because I was mad at the Colts about my contract, or mad at the team doctors. Man, I don't want to be traded. I'm cool with the Colts. I'm just a lot more comfortable in South Florida than anywhere else. I needed to be in a comfortable place rehabbing my knee. I was already mad I was losing out on all that money, and I didn't want to be reminded of it every day, limping to meetings, moping, getting asked a thousand questions by reporters.

My doctor, my physical therapist, my friends, my school, all my people are in South Florida. Why do I need to be anywhere else? I've been in rehab incarceration for the past eight months, and I wanted to stay close to the people I trust. And voluntary means voluntary, man. If your boss made tomorrow voluntary, you might not damn well go to work either. You want to fine me for missing a mandatory camp? Fine me. I'll pay you to let me stay home. It's worth it to me. I needed to let my physical therapist put me back together, to get my body and mind right.

If camp had been around the corner from South Florida, I would have been there. But I hate to fly. I hate it so much that, if Coach Dungy lets me, I'm gonna buy a bus so that when we play in Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Tennessee this season, I can just roll back into Indianapolis instead of getting on a plane. When I'm done with this game, I ain't flying nowhere. I like being in control too much. That's why I won't even get on a roller-coaster when I take the kids to Disney World.

Fly up to Indianapolis for what? To stand around? I get paid for playing. I don't get paid to watch. If I can't play and give it my all, it kills me to just stand there. And what good is 100% attendance at those camps if you lose? I'm about producing. All that other crap you're going to get mad at me for, you can have all that. I ain't hurting no one. I'm married to being free. I led the league in rushing my first two years, and it's because I worked real hard, not because of no voluntary camps.

You want to accuse me of being a bad teammate? During the off-season, you can label me a bad teammate. But come season time, there's no way you can consider me bad unless you have a grudge. I work my ass off, but it's going to be on my schedule. I'm always in the gym at 2 a.m. during the off-season. I got a friend in Immokalee who can turn on the lights at a field, and I was always calling him all off-season at midnight, 1 a.m., 2 a.m., so I could run routes and work on my cuts. The Colts know how hard I work. They know what kind of person I am. You can test me, and you can test everyone else on the team, and I guarantee you I'll be at or near the top of everything. Those tests don't lie. They'll tell you how hard I've been working.

When reporters were coming down from Indianapolis, thinking I was mad at the Colts, where did they find me? At the gym. Always. But I didn't do interviews. There was nothing to talk about. They want to make something out of nothing. It's not my job to babble. That doesn't bring in cash and doesn't heal torn ACLs.

I'm guaranteeing you I'm coming hard and prepared this season when I come to ball, and you can throw all that other crap out the window.

I know Peyton [Manning] says I should have been there at the camps with the team last season, but me and him are cool on this. Peyton is a good guy, a team player. I got no problems with Peyton. This won't be a big deal. I'm going to do my own thing, regardless. I make my own decisions. The NFL isn't making them for me. You think that just because I'm in the NFL, I'm going to let someone else make me uncomfortable?

	He's still Real & Raw.

I stuck to my routine, and I'm way ahead of schedule now. I'm going to tear the league up.

I know I'm going to be just as bad as I was. I know it. Failure isn't an option. It's not like I've been down in South Florida drinking piņa coladas. I'm not out there partying. This is not a year to party. That's not common sense. I don't take a sip of anything from Memorial Day until the last snap of the season. My life during the season is being at the practice facility, then coming home and waiting to be at the practice facility.

This is an easy-ass game for me, too easy. The only way for me to get stopped was some bulls--- injury. It got to the point where I was coming home after running the ball 20, 30 times in a game, and I wasn't even sore. I'd come home on Sundays after games and play basketball for hours with my friends. Believe that.

High school, college, the pros, it has all been the same. Work hard, practice hard, same results. It's just a little faster and more detailed at this level. But I'm a little faster and more detailed at this level too. After a while, you don't even have to study that hard. Practice is so long, drawn-out and boring that I'll start doing push-ups in the middle of it. I wish I could have headphones out there or play Tetris on the GameBoy. You can only study so much. It's basic, the same old stuff. The only mistakes I make are from being bored.

That's why playing flag football with my boys this off-season was so much fun. It felt new. It was all over TV, and I got criticized for it, but I was testing my body, cutting, running around for the first time in months on my knee. I was having it taped on my camcorder and studying it. I knew my knee was okay when I started dunking again in basketball.

There was nobody at the flag football games at first, but then people found out and the crowds and reporters came. It became a big deal, and I had to quit before the championship game. We lost, but I can't be disrespecting Mr. Irsay and Mr. Polian [the GM]. I think Mr. Irsay is the coolest owner in the league, and he didn't want me out there. I think you can get hurt any old way, playing flag football or walking across the street, but everyone looks at things differently than I do.

My relationship with my Colts teammates is cool. It's not like college, when it was super tight, rooming together, eating together, borrowing each other's cars, but it's cool. A lot of my teammates on the Colts are married, and that's why I'm always around the guys from the University of Miami. They're real hungry in college. I want to be around people like that. When you get older, that hunger is gone. But those guys at UM are starving. I miss those days.

I still got my Impala, though, in Hurricane orange. The 1975 one has nitro in the back, but I haven't used that yet. It scares me. And I lost my driver's license speeding back and forth to Immokalee, so I won't be testing the nitro out anytime soon. I had to take a $150 cab ride to get to training camp [in Terre Haute, Ind.], but now I'm ready to ball again. The only thing I don't like about football right now is my contract situation. Incentives -- I would never, ever do that again.

But I've got my incentive now, man. It's time to have fun and get paid.

This article appears in the September 2 issue of ESPN The Magazine.

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