ISLAMORADA, Fla. €" This is where the sweat is, in a cramped and dark room away from all the light in his life. It is the only place you will find the scent of who Jimmy Johnson used to be, back when the chase defined him and made him a so very unhappy champion, and it smells a lot differently than the rest of his manicured property out here in paradise.

Just outside is a private beach and a swimming pool with a bar and a saltwater pond he fills with lobster and fish he catches himself. And a Corvette with less than a thousand miles on it because, if he has to leave this breathtaking area at all, he does so in one of his two boats.

But in here, in this musty weight room in the guest house, near all his worn-out scuba tanks and fishing rods, is just about the only proof that Johnson once presided over kingdoms. All the magazine covers are in frames on the wall, dozens of them from inside and out of sports, plus the photos with Bill Clinton and Paul McCartney and Gene Hackman and the like. The photos are not unlike the football life that gave birth to them €" faded, out back, behind him.

"The old days," Johnson says, sweeping a hand across the room. "My wife says she doesn't want any of this crap in the house."

A laugh. The former Miami Hurricanes and Dolphins coach does that a lot these days. Laughs and dances shirtless and drinks Heineken Lights and throws parties and hugs friends and calls his wife Rhonda "Honeybun" and worries not at all.

Look at those photos, and you will see Johnson age right before your eyes into the trim and tan grandfather he is today, the bloated and maniacal dictator replaced by a lean 190 pounds of life-is-good. He is so happy. Happier than he ever was while conquering strong men and holding up trophies. And, not coincidentally, the light started pouring into his life just about the moment he left behind football for good.

The sun-soaked Atlantic Ocean is right outside, glistening for as far as the eye can see, and he's on it as early as 5 a.m. most days chasing wahoo. He usually goes by himself because "it's meditation as much as fishing." You can see God from there, staring at the sun 20 miles off shore on flat water with a cooler full of beer.

Of all the photos on all the walls in this guest house, there is only one Johnson points out and wants to talk about. And it isn't any of the ones that depict his power or leadership or greatness in staged poses of strength. It is one of him frolicking underwater with porpoises.

"Wayne Huizenga and I are always talking about QTL," he says. "Quality Time Left."

Coaching has an addiction's lure. It is a terrible, wonderful job that runs through the veins like emotional heroin. In our town alone, legends Pat Riley and Bill Parcells and Isiah Thomas still feel the need to conquer in some way and have yo-yoed their families all over the country in the unforgiving grip of the addiction, always chasing a next high that refuses to stay caught.

But joy and fulfillment are not synonyms. Stan Van Gundy can tell you. The Orlando coach is in the NBA Finals now, at the top of his sport, but he does not really enjoy his job. Suffers it, really. He enjoys the rewards, obviously, but not the process. The constant prodding/confrontation/conflict with millionaire players who are at once his employees and his bosses fills his life with uncomfortable daily tension.

It is a lucrative suffering that pays off (or doesn't) in the heights (or depths) reached in a game's final moments. Coaches endure the other 23 hours and 58 minutes in the day in exchange for the rush of those two minutes.

Oh, it can be a great gig if the vanities feed you. Glory. Ego. Money. Fame. Power. All the superficialities are there. But the throne can feel so very empty.

Former Dolphins coach Nick Saban and St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa constantly question the worth of what they do for a living. Former Redskins coach Joe Gibbs used to have his family tape dinner conversations and send them over to the office. Even winners such as Bill Belichick and Andy Reid will call Johnson in the middle of the night, on the way home from another tedious practice and another 17-hour day, and promise Johnson that one day they too will walk into the sunshine the way Johnson did.

But they never do, not even as Reid's family falls apart around him, his kids in and out of handcuffs.

"We all get so infected with praise, attention, accolades," Johnson says. "It is a highly egotistical position. It isn't easy to deal with people no longer telling you how great you are. You get used to people bowing. It is hard to walk away from people bowing. People are afraid to leave the limelight, the money, the ego stroke. People are afraid of change."

So he is an analyst on TV instead, working with and for people he cares about. It allows him to stay close to the parts of the game he loves and avoid the parts he hates. The hours. The stress. The organizing. The losses. The responsibility. The criticism from people who know less than you. Those are all gone.

"Pro coaching is ..." Johnson begins, and then he makes a sound like he's vomiting.

Earned freedom. That's what he has now. He knows so much about evaluating talent that even the front office of the San Antonio Spurs came by and stayed in his guest house, looking for wisdom in their sport. He could be running a team the way Parcells is, with full control, especially because San Diego Chargers owner Dean Spanos is a good friend who has stayed in the guest house as well, but he prefers to just consult from afar, when he feels like it, when the fish aren't biting.

He wears out those boats. Doesn't even bother fixing or maintaining them. Just gets a new one every six months or so. His agent calls all the time and tells him there's another $50,000 speaking engagement. He could make an easy million dollars by doing two a month, but he almost always declines.

"Why?" he says. "Money isn't important anymore. The money is going to the kids. It isn't money I can spend."

He is up on his office now, fiddling around on the computer. The websites he checks the most often are wind and weather for boating and stocks. He clicks to reveal one stock he bought for $23 a share. It is up to $58 now. At 23, he bought 40,000 shares.

"I'm still competitive, just not stressed," he says.

Will you go days without putting on pants, Jimmy?

"Days?" he says. "Weeks! I might put on a pair of slacks three times in the offseason. Maybe."

He points to a picture on the wall and laughs.

It is of his wedding ceremony. He is wet and shirtless while cutting the big cake with his wife.

His only source of stress these days?

"Travel," he says. "Airports."

Because he has to leave here.

Something about football he misses?

A very long pause.

"You've stumped me," he says with a smile.

He is the embodiment of The Power Of Now, a best-selling book that helps with the path toward enlightenment. Don't live in the negative past (regret) or negative future (fear). The only moment you are guaranteed is now. So when fans ask him to relive games, he genuinely doesn't seem to remember scores or specific plays or much of anything at all, even though he has an excellent memory.

He didn't like who he had to be to win the most €" an obsessive-compulsive jerk, really €" but says without remorse that he couldn't have been nicer because his teams would have been worse. His closest friends now are divers and fishermen and people who have nothing to do with football. Rhonda organizes the house parties with themes. Pirates are next, for example. The Rhumba Kings played out back the other day.

"I've programmed myself to never look back," Johnson says, his little dog Buttercup on his lap. "I've blocked out the past. Every dream or nightmare I had for 20 years was dealing with a football game. Stupid stuff. A nightmare that our uniforms weren't ready or something like that. I haven't had a football dream for six or seven years. You know the last dream I had? That I couldn't get through airport security because I was carrying a monkey."

He found perspective while weeping and staring into his mother's coffin. He realized that he had let a lot of life blur past in a whirl of appointments and responsibilities and superficial desires. That's the moment when his need for football-first died, too, at that funeral. He hadn't told enough people he loved them, or enjoyed his time around them without being preoccupied. Huizenga told Johnson that he could remain the head of the Dolphins and spend the entire offseason in the Keys. Get all the glory without the work, in other words. But Johnson said he couldn't do it that way if it had his name on it.

"After Mother passed, I thought there had to be something else out there," he says. "I was happy in my accomplishments €" fulfilled, satisfied, proud, very proud €" but I didn't have true joy. I had a responsibility when I was coaching. And that was overriding everything. Family. Friends. Not just friends but even the idea of friendship. I didn't care whether I had friends or not. I was responsible if it didn't work. And when things would go wrong, I'd get upset to no end. I'd replay it in my mind all day and night. At the end, winning was just OK but a loss just crushed me. What kind of way to live is that?"

So it is hard to be happy while being king?

"Right," he says. "Exactly. Tell me about it."

The need to compete did sneak up on Johnson in the oddest of ways recently, though. Survivor is one of his favorite shows. And he wanted to be on it. So he went out back on the private beach, Rhonda with the video camera, and explained to the producers why he should be allowed even though he worked for a rival network. He filled out thick files of paperwork and signed contracts. He got his yellow-fever shots.

And he was headed to Africa for 45 days of seclusion when the doctor called about some of his tests. One artery to his heart was totally blocked, another blocked 70 percent. He wouldn't be going anywhere. He has lost 30 pounds since. No more big bowls of butter-pecan ice cream before bed. And now the big, bad leader of violent men sheepishly orders the lighter dish when Honeybun says no to the prime-rib wrap.

His name and attitude are on a restaurant down the street, here in this land of commerce dotted with bait and bars and boats. Jimmy Johnson's Big Chill, it is called. Belichick, who loves staying in the guest house, away from all the pain and headaches, couldn't make the grand opening a few weeks ago. Too busy with work. So he sent two cases of Dom Perignon instead.

"The Pygmalion effect," Johnson says.

It is a form of self-fulfilling prophecy, named after George Bernard Shaw's play, in which a professor wagers that he can teach a poor flower girl to behave upper-class.

The general idea is that students internalize expectations. Poor expectations, poor student. Positive labels are more likely to equal success ... in material measurements, at least.

"Praise is the trap," Johnson says. "The way people tell Belichick he's a genius and the best ever, the more he wants to become it. The way everyone says Parcells is the master of rebuilding, the more he works to rebuild."

Johnson laughs here in a way that makes his face go red, Buttercup on his lap and the boat waiting and the sun just right as it pours warmth and light into the beautiful house with floor-to-ceiling windows facing the open sea.

"I used to care about that stuff," he says.