Organizers were at first skeptical of Randy Moss joining their workouts, but he's proven himself. (Yahoo Sports)

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Randy Moss flips his hoodie up over his head, smiles and shouts, "There's gonna be a funeral tonight!"

It's 6:15 on a Monday night. There's a swell of nervous laughter around him as he leads a march through an enormous gym, past an Irish dance academy and out a double-door into 29-degree weather for an hour-long workout.

A football field sits empty in the dark, and Moss jogs to drop cones where midfield and the end zone would be. But there's no football this evening. This is a twice-a-week boot camp Moss helps run, for anyone who wants to join him, for free.

He's not just a coach, though. He's in the camp, grinding, every Monday and Wednesday.

"It's a little bit harder than an NFL workout," he says.

That hasn't kept anyone away; quite the opposite. This Moss-a-palooza has drawn nearly 500 people for some classes since it began in August, from soccer moms to weekend warriors who want to try to keep up with The Freak. The gym, called STAX, is even going for a world-record boot camp in May, aiming for 2,000 people or more. The owner of the gym, Eric McCoy, says some people have met their Tinder dates here.

"People want to compete against Randy," McCoy says. "People want to race Randy."

Moss as a man of the people might come as a bit of a surprise to longtime NFL fans. His reputation has been closed-off since he arrived at the 1997 Heisman ceremony sporting a pair of sunglasses. Nearly 20 years later, fellow finalists Charles Woodson and Peyton Manning have been feted for brilliant careers. Moss, who was arguably just as outstanding from a statistical standpoint, is still a bit of a mystery.

Maybe that's because he's still as unfiltered off the field as he was on it. "When those lights come on," he says of his football days, "I don't have no friends and I'm not here to smile. They thought I should be, 'Hey sir, how you doing?' Well, I'm out here to demolish people."

He has strong opinions on everything from the ESPN documentary on his life – "pure lies" – to becoming an NFL position coach – "I'm a bit more advanced than that" – to his reputation as a player – "I'm not a shake-hands player in this brutal sport."

Thing is, he is a shake-hands person now.

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View photos Randy Moss showed up for boot camp fresh off a red eye from California. (Yahoo Sports) More

Moss isn't the only celebrity at the boot camp. Emily "Breeze" Ross is a co-coach. She's a star in the world of CrossFit, and has been to the CrossFit Games (its version of the Super Bowl) twice. Some people come to train with her; some feel she's a better athlete than Moss. (She won't go that far; she grew up cheering for Moss as a Marshall fan.)

Ross is due with her first child in April, so tonight she is yelling instructions, and old No. 84 is in the class he helped plan. The group starts with three rounds of 20 squats, 10 push-ups, five sit-ups and a sprint around the football field. By the end of that stretch some people are bent over with their hands frozen and their mouths puffing out plumes of smoke.

That was the warm-up.

"We've had people throw up and get sick and make all kinds of excuses and leave," Ross says. It's not hard to see why.

It gets more intense: sprints, lunges, burpee-broad-jumps, bear-crawls. Moss does it all, sweating even in the freezing temperatures, pausing only to shout encouragement: "Let's ride!" is a frequent saying. "I hope everyone did all of your push-ups!" he nags. "Take your time ladies!" he says as he sees a couple of women struggling.

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