Not even rain on a Monday dampens the spirits of the Tennessee Vols. As a summer shower steams up the July air in Knoxville, the players move their 7-on-7 workout into the air-conditioned Neyland-Thompson Sports Center. The rain pelts the roof of this artificially turfed airplane hangar, but nobody can hear it over the boom box at the far end of the field blaring "Cotton Eye Joe" and the shouts of teenage girls whose high school cheerleading camp has overtaken the complex.

Right now the players are more interested in pom-poms and split jumps than agility drills and pass routes. One 300-pound defensive tackle starts shaking his big butt in a mock square dance. Nearby, five DBs show the girls how it's done by performing synchronized back flips. Safety Rashad Baker brings down the house, back-flipping the entire width of the field. Then, another Vol -- the only one in a green jersey -- struts to the center of the field and pulls a huge mesh curtain across the facility, walling off the cheerleader camp. Playtime is over.

Kelley Washington didn't give up NFL millions to goof around. The 23-year-old sophomore receiver has a mother to support, a grandmother to honor and a vision to fulfill. He also has, as he'll tell you, a position to reinvent, which explains why he's dubbed himself The Future. Some around the team and the local media, though, call him something else -- The Cancer. No sweat. He didn't come back to make friends, either.

Washington takes a moment for his teammates to assemble by position groups before whispering something to QB Casey Clausen and briskly walking to the 30-yard line. At 6'4", 225, Washington dwarfs the other wideouts. He gets into his stance, fists clenched tight and massive quads bulging. With a sleepy-eyed "whatever" look, he glances at a cluster of Tennessee DBs -- one of his ways of issuing a challenge. Just like that damn green jersey the coaches gave him, the one that screams, "Hands off!" The DBs hate the jersey; that's why he never practices without it.

Willie Miles, a feisty corner from Texas, gets the first crack at covering Washington. Miles lines up nose to nose with Washington before bravado gives way to sanity and a five-yard cushion. Washington blurs past Miles, but the 180-pound corner cuffs him across the chin as the ball hurtles toward them. With his body heading toward the goal and his neck toward midfield, Washington extends his left arm and gathers in the ball before Miles corkscrews him into the turf. The ball pops out and the DBs go wild, jumping on one another like they just beat Florida. Jabari Greer, a starting corner who's nursing a sore right shoulder, sprints downfield in his jeans to yap in Washington's face.

Washington responds, looking Miles in the eye: "Go route." And that's exactly what he runs next. Touchdown. Then post corner. Touchdown. Fade. Touchdown. Washington undresses every DB Tennessee has and, with 10 minutes left in practice, he peels off the green jersey and wanders shirtless over to a metal bench. "I think I killed them enough for one day," he says without a hint of humor. When the rest of the Vols file off the field, Washington hears Greer still chirping in his direction. "Hey," Washington calls out in falsetto, "don't you know you can't make the club in the tub? You can't make the club in the tub!" As usual, The Future has the last word.

***

Better clear your schedule before asking Kelley Washington, "How ya doing?" He'll tell you exactly how he's doing, how he's done and how he'll do.

"I am so excited, man. This is the year when I'm gonna tear it up and take it all worldwide," he says, transforming a cramped booth at Shoney's into his pulpit. "Last year was just a glimpse of what I'm about. Now, I'm ready to explode. People are gonna look at me and say, 'He's a mix of David Boston and Terrell Owens -- a big, tall, rangy receiver who can change the game.' I feel like I'm what receivers are gonna be like in the future. I am the most complete receiver out there. I'll definitely be the best combination of size and speed when I come out for the draft this year."

He also adds that he might have the country's strongest passing arm, too: "I can throw it about 80 yards." And if the Vols hoops team needs some help? "I could easily play that, too.

"These are the things that God has blessed me with," he says. "I'm just an unbelievable athlete." At that, the John Goodman clone in the next booth drops his biscuit to gawk in bewilderment.

Washington often gets that look from strangers, classmates, even rival coaches. LSU's staff couldn't take their eyes off him during the pregame warm-ups for the SEC championship game. He sailed around the field without his pads, his Under Armor looking like one of those superhero costumes with the built-in physique.

But Washington is more than just mouth and muscle. In his first season, he caught 64 passes for 1,010 yards even though he only started six games, and even though he'd never run a route before arriving in Knoxville. He set a school record for receiving yards in a game (256 vs. LSU), breaking a mark that had stood for 35 years.

The locals love Washington's tale: a failed minor league infielder sending letters to colleges proclaiming himself to be a 21st-century Jerry Rice. They love even more that Tennessee was the only school to believe him. And they eat it up when he plays to the crowd at Neyland Stadium and points to his mama after big catches.

Some teammates, though, aren't so fond of Washington's act. They can't stomach his arrogance, how he baits them in practice, how he spews his gospel of trash-talk. Of course, he also knows they can't touch him while he's wearing the green jersey. But the guy who gave Washington that jersey doesn't mind the rants. "It creates that competitive fire," says coach Phil Fulmer. "He challenges the DBs, and I think that makes them better. He knows exactly what he's doing."

Not so, according to Julian Battle, the DB who matches up with Washington the most during practice. "His antics might help some," Battle says, "but at a certain point it breaks down the team, makes us compete against each other. We're supposed to be a team."

"You learn to either love him or hate him," says Greer. "But either way, you have to respect him."

Washington played up his prima donna act after word came that he would not play in the opener against Wyoming. He claimed that he -- not Fulmer or team doctors -- decided his sprained right knee was not ready. "I could go out and play right now," he said. "I just want to be 100%. I'm just taking precautionary measures for myself and my family."

Fulmer and the UT training staff quickly scrambled to bail out Washington, explaining that it was their decision, too. Fulmer reminded skeptics who questioned the receiver's dedication that Washington played five games last season with a stress fracture in his right foot.

Washington says if he really were saving himself for the NFL, he would have left last year. After all, that was the plan. He and fellow UT WR Donte' Stallworth had talked about coming out together. But on the eve of the deadline -- after sitting down with his mom, brother and uncle -- Washington pulled a 180 and said he'd be back for one more year. His mom, a nurses aide, told him she could wait a year to quit the night shift at the hospital.

Stallworth says he felt duped that Washington was coming out and that Washington wanted to be the Vols' go-to guy. Washington laughs at Stallworth's conspiracy theory, and denies the rumor that he bet Stallworth on who would get drafted higher. Of course, he isn't shy about saying who would've gone first. "If teams wanted a big, physical guy with 4.3 speed, then they'd take me," he says. "But if they want a smaller inside guy, they'd take Donte'. An NFL team would be crazy not to take me."

***

The Future sobbed like a baby on Aug.21, 2000, his 21st birthday. He was a minor league third baseman playing for the Kane County (Ill.) Cougars with a life stuck in neutral. Washington had already spent four years in the Florida Marlins system and had flashed more tools than Bob Vila. Scouts raved about his speed and power and said he had the organization's strongest throwing arm. The Marlins had taken Washington with the 306th overall pick in the 1997 draft, and had seen him sprout from a 6'1", 170-pounder into a hulking power hitter. But those 55 pounds couldn't help him touch a curveball, and now Washington was hitting .205. The grind of 12-hour bus rides had worn him down, and he couldn't help but envy his former roommate in rookie ball, Javon Walker, who left the minors to star at Florida State as a wideout.

When Washington stared at himself in his bathroom mirror on that August morning, he didn't like what he saw. He hadn't just disappointed himself, he had let down his grandmother. Frances Washington, a home nurse who had taught him the importance of hard work and the power of religion, would not have liked the defeated man staring back from the mirror. Washington has never known his father and never wants to know him. Everything he ever needed, his grandmother took care of. She raised him and Kelley's mother and brother in Stephens City, Va., a town of 1,100, in the tiny house where she grew up, where the Klan burned a cross on her yard when she was 5.

Frances had died a year earlier, but there, in that bathroom, Kelley believes she spoke to him. She told him it was time to go, time to start over. With two weeks left in the season, Washington threw his belongings in his Geo Tracker and left Geneva, Ill., without telling a soul.

Alone at the wheel, he thought about basketball. He thought about football. And then he thought about when he was 6 years old and sitting in his grandma's car. She'd take him along on her 11 p.m. calls to homes of elderly patients, where she'd clean bed pans. He remembered craning his neck to stare out the window. Those 20-minute waits would seem like forever. It made him cry back then, and it made him cry all over again.

He drove through the tears and ended up in Orlando at his ex-girlfriend's place. He spent a day with her before heading home to Stephens City. It was then, driving north on I-95, that he vowed to make everyone proud and take care of his mama.

His family figured Kelley would try hoops. "Because that's really his sport," says his older brother John. "He's actually better at that than he is at football." Kelley, though, asked himself a simple question: How many 6'4" basketball players are there in this world, and how many 6'4" wide receivers? "Reality won out," he says.

Washington and Walter Barr, his coach at Sherando High, dug up his highlight tape from when he was an option QB and sent letters to Miami, North Carolina, LSU and Tennessee. He wrote that during his baseball career, he'd had a huge growth spurt and become even faster. Of the four schools, only Tennessee responded, and only because one of Barr's former players, Larry Slade, was a UT coach.

Washington finally met with Vols coaches on an unofficial visit to Tennessee, where they watched him run, throw, catch and run some more. When Fulmer and his staff looked at each other like they had just won the lottery, Washington knew he had just won a scholarship.

***

The Future sits quietly in his room in a duplex he shares with a reserve kicker and a student trainer. He has a three-foot stack of game tapes in a corner and a pile of clothes in another. Half of the room is covered with pictures of Iverson, Kobe, Vick and Jordan; photos of himself -- in uniform and shirtless poolside -- cover most of the rest. Inspirational quotes fill in the little wall space that remains. Some from the Bible, some from Muhammad Ali, some from himself.

	He's not cocky, he just knows he's No. 1.

And on his TV sits a 5"x7" frame holding his grandmother's driver's license. He spends hours in here alone, watching game tape, pondering life in the NFL and thinking about Frances. On some off weekends, he drives home to Virginia to read letters to his grandmother and great-grandmother, and place them on their graves.

He hasn't gotten close to anyone at UT. "It's just myself and my family," he says, "because in life, those are the only people you can really trust. I'm not an outcast, but I am somebody who's about business. My only agenda is to take care of my mother. Until I can look up to the sky and say to my great-grandmother and my grandmother, 'You didn't die for nothing,' I don't need any friends."

He seldom goes out. While his peers are partying, he prefers to power out 200 push-ups in his room. He even took the radio out of his Tracker because he thought it would mess with his focus. "A lot of my teammates don't understand," he says. "And I don't look down at them for that. I gotta be the financial supporter. No time for games. I gotta handle business. I've got records to set here."

Washington points to each turn in his life as part of God's plan to make him the ultimate wide receiver. He feels he was sent to play minor league baseball to learn, of all things, humility. "It's the one sport I can't dominate whenever I want to," he says. "But God put that in front of me to get me mentally and physically stronger. He has a plan for me. Just like in the first game of last season, Donte' gets hurt. Then Eric Parker gets hurt. To me, that's God's way of saying, 'It's your turn, Kelley. You gotta be the one.' "

The Future brags that he's finally got that "receiver's mentality," and that's where the most startling transformation has taken place. Friends back home say Kelley was always a polite, humble kid. "Actually, he was always low-key," says his brother John. "He really didn't talk much."

Maybe his personality changed with his new physique. Or perhaps it was his reaction to failure. Whatever the reason, the quiet kid who went off to the minors now makes Keyshawn sound like Stuart Smalley. If that's what it takes, so be it. As Washington points out, Terrell Owens, Randy Moss and David Boston aren't exactly timid. "I love Terrell, his attitude and arrogance," he says. "He's got a style about him, and that's me."

Washington knows he has a rep, good and bad. But after spending the first two weeks of the season in the tub with a sprained right knee -- and with a belated season debut against Florida on Sept.21 -- The Future's not about to let up. "I never listen to anyone who complains that I am cocky or brash," he says. "They don't know what it takes to get the edge, to be fully confident in your ability to where the only person who can stop you is yourself."

Stop himself? Kelley Washington can't even contain himself.

This article appears in the September 30 issue of ESPN The Magazine.