CHICAGO (AP) -Joe Paterno was holding court at age 81, with no sign the Hall of Famer has lost his comic touch or his desire to coach Penn State.
“I like what I’m doing, I’m having fun, I enjoy it. I don’t go into a staff meeting and sit there like this,” Paterno said before slouching over with his head down, looking at the floor as if he were depressed. A table full of reporters laughed.
Vintage JoePa was on display Friday at his annual roundtable session, part of Big Ten media day.
Instead of trading barbs with writers about playcalling or starting quarterbacks – as can often happen during the heat of a season – Paterno laid on his trademark charm.
And he was probably pleased that the question he gets most often from the media – “When are you going to retire?” – didn’t come up until 45 minutes after he sat down with a cup of coffee.
No revelations on this morning, except perhaps that Paterno said he gets THAT question far more frequently from reporters than from any other group.
JoePa is entering the last year of his contract, and he and school administrators have agreed to hold off talk about any new deal until after this season. They have also said Paterno doesn’t need something in writing to keep his job.
Still, Paterno isn’t quite sure why there’s so much interest as to when he might actually call it quits. One of his theories: others who retired at age 65 and had second thoughts look at Paterno “and all of a sudden, here’s this old (guy) at 81, highly visible, (in a) competitive arena and they wonder how long he can go.”
Instead, Paterno spent much of the first part of his two-hour session on Friday offering colorful answers and stories from throughout his storied 43-year head coaching career.
The buzz about Penn State reverting to a spread-style offense? The spread isn’t quite as groundbreaking as people think, Paterno said.
“I played it in high school! I played the spread and shotgun in high school, and we never huddled once the whole year,” he said.
Not that he’s thinking about calling the signals again to show how to run the spread to starting quarterback candidates Daryll Clark or Pat Devlin.
“With me at quarterback, it wouldn’t work,” he said. “It might work with someone else at quarterback, but not with me, not the way they throw around the ball today.”
He believes the game has changed for the better since he lined up at Brown his senior season in 1949, attributing much of the credit to black athletes.
He points to a picture of that 1949 Brown football team in his office as proof. When black high school recruits today come into his office, Paterno asks them to look at the picture to tell him the difference between his 1949 team and today’s college football teams.
“They say, ‘No brothers,”’ Paterno said. “And I say, ‘Yeah, no brothers and no speed.”’
An avid reader, Paterno marveled about David McCullough’s biography of John Adams. His current read is Herman Melville’s “Billy Budd.” Reading on plane rides during road trips helps distract him from worrying too much about his team.
“You start second-guessing yourself, that maybe you ought to change a little of this or a little of that,” Paterno said. “That gets dangerous, so rather than doing that, I read.”
Among other Paterno nuggets:
-He had urged linebacker LaVar Arrington not to leave Penn State after his junior season in 1999 because he wasn’t ready for the NFL. While supremely athletic, Arrington “had terrible fundamentals,” Paterno said.
-His wife, Sue, turned down a fellowship in English at Brown to marry him. Did she make the right decision? “No,” Paterno quipped. “She’ll tell you that.”
-The secret to his good health lies with some Italian staples. “Eat a little more olive oil and a little more garlic and you’ll be all right.”
While his career plans weren’t quite a hot topic on Friday, it was different for receiver Derrick Williams, who was looking worn out after more than 90 minutes of grilling.
Williams knew what the top question was going to be.
“With Joe, he’s going to be here as long as he wants to be here,” Williams said in a monotone, robotic voice.
For Paterno, that means getting ready for a staff meeting as preseason camp draws near. As proof, he pulled out of his pocket notes scribbled in pencil on crumpled pieces of paper – points he wanted to remember to make to his assistants.
“When I go into the staff meeting on Monday, I got notes here that are going to drive these guys nuts.”
Add A Comment