Paterno still enjoys coaching Penn State

He was his vintage self at his annual roundtable session, part of Big Ten media day.

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 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.”