CHICAGO — Joe Paterno amused the crowd as if he were telling tall tales at happy hour. At age 81, there's no sign the Hall of Fame coach has lost his gift for gab or his desire to stay on the Penn State sideline.

"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 chuckled.

Vintage JoePa was on display Friday at his annual roundtable session at 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, save for a query once in a while at an alumni function.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.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.Paterno 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."'