For nine seasons, Jim Haslett camped in the players quarters at summer training camps, and rarely enjoyed a good night's sleep on the dormitory-quality mattresses. Jack Del Rio went to 11 training camps and dreaded the final session in 1995 as much as the first practice of his '85 rookie season. Herm Edwards attended a decade's worth of camps as a player and, like most veterans, wondered about their overall purpose.

Of course, the passage of time and a change of job description and responsibility have altered those views somewhat, as the three are part of a contingent of 11 current head coaches who were once NFL players. Hang a whistle around a guy's neck, you know, and those screeches of disgust from a past life are instantly transformed into a shrill reminder to the minions in his charge that another camp drill is about to commence.

	Herm Edwards and the Jets open training camp on July 21.

Sweat, it seems, becomes sweeter when a onetime laborer is promoted to foreman.

"As a player, when you see a guy go over to 'the dark side,' you know, the coaching staff, you figure he suddenly enjoys camp life lots more than he used to," said Tennessee Titans coach Jeff Fisher, who played five years for the Chicago Bears before moving over to the coaching ranks. "Hey, I'm not sure anyone really enjoys training camp. It's kind of a necessary evil. But maybe when you're on the other side of the fence you understand its importance a little more, you know?"

Funny how a person's outlook on training camp is so dramatically different when viewed through sunglasses instead of a facemask. Exchange a helmet for a visor and, if training camp isn't quite Shangri-la, neither is it Hades anymore.

Despite the preconceptions of players, most coaches don't embrace training camp, since it also takes them away from their families for a prolonged period. On the flip side, coaches who were once players in the league often develop selective amnesia when queried about camp travails, and the grousing they once did about two-a-days becomes more benign.

One assistant coach who retired from a lengthy playing career only a couple years ago noted that the prism through which he views camp in his new job is akin to the similar change he underwent in his political views. When he was in college and living "on someone else's buck," as he termed it, his principles were decidedly liberal. The coach even recalled attending a few rallies, as a student, for left-leaning candidates.

"But as I started making money and buying things of my own, like a car and a house, I definitely became more hard-line on stuff," said the assistant. "You get older, and your priorities change, you look at (things) a lot different."

Indeed, the progression is a natural one, particularly as an individual's proprietorship increases with age. And essentially, a head coach is a proprietor, the man ceded with the responsibility of setting a training camp agenda. Coaches are also men with relatively short shelf-lives, as owners demand quicker gratification, and that probably twists their outlook on camp as well.

Coaches who complained about camp when they were players have a way of falling into a sort of father-knows-best mindset when they move from the field to the grease board. At the same time, most who make the transition insist that they take with them a few lessons from their playing days, and incorporate some memories into their methodologies.

"If anything," said Edwards, who stewarded the New York Jets to playoff appearances in each of his first two seasons as a head coach, "I think coaches who have been players get some advantage from having experienced camp from the rank-and-file side. You've been there, you've done that, and you know what players like and don't like. I definitely think there is some benefit there."

Virtually every head coach will contend, and correctly so in this more enlightened age, that they are more sensitive to players' needs in training camps than their predecessors were, say, 20 years ago.

Training camps in general are no longer akin to the Bataan Death March. Few coaches have their teams in full pads for both sessions of two-a-day practices. Increasingly, the trend is toward not having two full workouts on consecutive days. More clubs are convening the longer practice of the day in the morning, when the humidity isn't as brutal, and some are moving sessions to the cool of the evening.

	“	If anything, I think coaches who have been players get some advantage from having experienced camp from the rank-and-file side. You've been there, you've done that, and you know what players like and don't like. I definitely think there is some benefit there. ”
		— Herm Edwards, Jets head coach

And while coaches still prefer the heightened attention level provided by the isolation of camp, where outside distractions are minimized, more teams are holding training camps closer to home.

This year, a dozen clubs will convene the camps at their home complexes, the sites where they also practice during the regular season. Given some plans already on drawing boards, roughly half the league will hold camps at their home sites within three years, instead of traveling to college campuses for summer workouts. Just eight years ago, only a handful of teams had training camp practices at their home base.

But neither the recent site changes nor expanded offseason schedules -- which became so burdensome three years ago that the NFL Players Association was forced to negotiate a set of guidelines that limit springtime workouts -- have significantly diminished the key importance of training camp.

Schedules remain tight. Free time is restrained. Team and position meetings still begin early in the morning and go late into the night. More than ever, the game is a business, and coaches must bring to bear their managerial skills. So coaches attempt to nurture a learning environment, one in which there is focus and function, and where chemistry is supposed to be fostered.

Unlike minicamp sessions, which are by rule conducted sans pads, the hitting is live in camp and the throttle is mashed to the floor. The speed of the game, which simply cannot be simulated in mini-camp environments, is cranked up. The off-tackle slant, installed in a minicamp and walked through without helmets and pads, is run full-go. The intensity is heightened, the competition stoked, the resolve ratcheted.

There is, after all, a limit to evolution.

"Your outlook might change but the purpose of training camp is still the same," Haslett said. "It still sets the tone. You go in, as a coach, with very precise ideas of what you want to get accomplished. And when you break camp, you want to know that you checked off everything that was on the list."

Len Pasquarelli is a senior writer for ESPN.com.