SAN ANTONIO ? Tom Coughlin always has loved training camp.

They named it after him in Jacksonville where, for eight seasons, the catch phrase “Camp Coughlin” was synonymous with what was widely considered one of the most demanding preseason regimens in the NFL.

This season, though, Camp Coughlin is different. The coach, fired by the Jaguars in December, is serving as an unpaid consultant for four teams this summer. His latest stop: San Antonio, where his former boss and mentor, Bill Parcells, is running his first camp with the Dallas Cowboys.

“I don’t make any pretense about the fact that I’m a football coach,” Coughlin said. “This is what I do. This is what I love to do.”

Coughlin used to own camp, a drill sergeant with a whistle who came off as a much bigger presence than one might expect from a slender, silver-haired, 56-year-old man who stands a few inches short of 6 feet.

This year at camp, he goes almost unnoticed, never raising his voice, sticking near the sidelines, wearing not his trademark teal-and-black Jaguars gear, but a black cap that says “NFL” and a gray shirt with the Cowboys star on the sleeve.

Coughlin is a creature of habit, and he’s doing what it takes to keep his mind sharp and his mental database fresh for his next head-coaching job, whether in the NFL or college.

“A year from now, I figure I’ll be running my first training camp somewhere,” he said.

There is baggage, however, and he knows it.

First, he must get rid of the reputation that he won’t share power. With the Jaguars, he had final say on personnel moves. He also hired the secretaries and picked the color of the paint on the walls. Some folks at Alltel Stadium felt his insistence on total control bordered on pathological.

A few months out of a job has changed his view on that.

“I don’t have to have a title,” he said. “It’s important that people in the league understand that.”

Getting people to understand him, however, won’t be as easy.

From the time he stepped foot in Jacksonville, Coughlin was derided for his unbending ways. For the most part, he came off as dour and humorless.

Talking to him now, unburdened by the day-to-day pressures of his job, it’s easy to find the smart, articulate, funny man Coughlin is — a history buff who has devoured books on Lewis and Clark, John Adams, Rudy Giuliani and Winston Churchill, among others, in his newly freed time.

When he stood behind the podium in Jacksonville to address the media or his players, however, that interesting side rarely came out.

“People got all over him,” said Cowboys receivers coach John McNulty, who held the same position on Coughlin’s staff. “I don’t know what they expected him to do — go downtown and tap dance for them every night?”

No. But unlike his mentor, Parcells, Coughlin never had the ability to defuse his detractors with a quick quip or a great story. He’d like to change that.

“We’re working on it,” said his wife, Judy. “We kid him. We say, ‘You used to be fun.’ … I just think he really believed you couldn’t show the other side of yourself in the business world. I’ve always disagreed with that, but I’m a much different person than Tom is.”