UNIVERSITY PARK -- Joe Paterno isn’t one for reflection or introspection, dwelling on the past or agonizing over what might have been (post-1979 Sugar Bowl excluded, of course).

He’ll do some contemplation in the offseason or in the quiet of his home office. But that’s it. His ability to focus on the job on hand has been a major reason he has succeeded for more than six decades with the same employer. Only years after a decision is made or a game decided, if you listen closely, he may finally tell you what he really thought. Maybe.

Like when he said this year that, yeah, maybe Jay was right; maybe he should have played Daryll Clark more when Anthony Morelli was the starting quarterback.

But those moments are few and far between. This Penn State football coach may have been on this planet for 30,192 days -- give or take a day or two -- but on Tuesday only the next five days mattered. As usual.

That’s one reason why his press conference in the Beaver Stadium interview room lasted only 20 minutes. It’s usually 30, maybe 31 minutes if he’s having a good time. (Listen to the press conference here.)

Yesterday, he clearly was not. So he got the heck out of there.

Paterno had enough questions about his not-so-special teams, the 24-7 lickin’ leveled by Ohio State, a line that can be really offensive, a loss against Iowa that just won’t die, the special teams (again) and his quarterbacks (current and future). So he gave short answers, the reporters grew tired of short answers, and we all called it a day.

Reminded me of when I was doing an interview with the coach a couple of decades ago. It was in the offseason, and I was preparing an annual yearbook covering the team. The previous season had not produced a stellar record. So I probed a bit, trying to find out what had happened. Joe wasn’t going to tell me. Or take the line of questioning for very long.

“Look,” he said, he paused for effect and looked me square in the eye. “If you want to talk about last season, we can end it right here.”

Gulp.

Tuesday was a little like that. While the Ohio State game was still top of the mind of the assembled media -- as it is with Nittany Nation -- Paterno says he has already moved on.

“Ohio State played a good football game,” he allowed. “We got licked by them. You hate to lose at home. But they played well. Didn’t put the ball on the ground. We punted the ball 10 times. We didn’t do a good job. We didn’t make a couple first downs so we wouldn’t have to kick.”

If you’re a crazy Nit Nut and you are looking for your pound of flesh, well that was your two ounces. With a side order of caveat.

“You just got to make sure you don’t overreact, that’s all, as a staff,” Paterno said. “I don’t think we’re going to overreact.”

Paterno told the same thing to his squad when the players assembled on Monday for their customary team meeting in the auditorium of Lasch Building.

“Coach Paterno never wastes words, so if he says something, you know it’s important,” said senior linebacker Josh Hull. “He brought up the Ohio State game, but he doesn’t dwell on the negative. He said we can’t give up on this season.”

Paterno is pragmatic about the Nittany Lions’ 8-2 record. How do we know? Because amid all the thorns of yesterday was this little bouquet. He was out of character when, in response to a question about whether a 10-2 season and a New Year’s Day bowl looked good, he didn’t bite the head off of the guy who asked it. History says that was a distinct possibility.

Instead, the coach gave a little smile and answered it straight up.

“Right now, we’re only 8-2. We’ve got a tough game this week. I’ll think about it at the end if that happens,” Paterno said.

He continued: “I think maybe we’ve got to be a little realistic each year when we look at a lot of things that go into it -- our graduation rate, the kids we’re recruiting, the type of effort we’ve gotten out of kids, the great job the staff does. I think maybe if we end up 10-2, that’s a pretty darn good year…if we end up 10-2.”

A few questions later, he added, “8-2 isn’t a disaster.”

This is what he was trying to say, I think:

Look, we have a graduation rate of 78 percent, according to the most recent NCAA Graduation Success Rate report for BCS football programs. We’re tied for ninth best graduation rate in the country. Notre Dame is No. 1 in graduation rate, and I don’t see their alum looking to extend Charlie Weis’ contract. We are the only team in the top 14 of the graduation list to be in this week’s Top 25 BCS rankings. The only one. Only six schools in the top 28 off the field are in the top 25 on the field. It’s a small group, an elite group. Now leave me alone, I have to make sure we don’t get cocky about being an 18-point favorite against Indiana.

If that’s not what he meant, it should be.

In other parts of the conference, he wasn’t so forthright. At least not intentionally. He was hammered left and right about his philosophy for coaching special teams. Penn State uses a number of assistant coaches to coach the punt, kickoff and field goal/extra point teams. Sum of the parts, that kind of thing.

What do the big dogs do? Florida and Ohio State both do not list a designated special teams coach on their coaching rosters. But Texas and Alabama both do; in both cases a position coach (i.e., tight end or defensive line) pulls double duty. So, obviously, teams can win -- or lose -- either way.

When beat veteran Neil Rudel of The Mirror in Altoona, a guy I respect and Joe does too, asked Paterno about having a singular coach for the special teams, as Rudel had thought been done in the past, Paterno bristled a bit.

“That’s not true. We haven’t had that for years and years, if ever,” the coach said. “We’ve always had one guy coaches this, one guy coaches that (on special teams). Everybody helps out. But we never had (just) a specialty coach. Now, your memory plays tricks on you after you’ve been around as I have, but I don’t believe.”

I’m with Rudel. He started covering Penn State football in 1978; I began in 1979. I thought that at least during some parts of Paterno’s tenure there was a designated point person for special teams.

So I went to my wall of Penn State football media guides. Just because something is in the guide, it may not be true in Paterno’s eyes. But that’s all I have to go on.

So I checked. And there, on page 56 of the 1985 Penn State media guide, was a page on Tom Bradley, former special teams captain extraordinaire. It lists him as the “Recruiting coordinator, specials team” coach. And it begins his bio with “Tom Bradley handles duties as recruiting coordinator and special teams coach at his alma mater.”

Things must have worked out with Scrap in that job; the Lions went through the 1985 regular undefeated and ranked No.1.

Then I pulled out the 1999 media guide, the book for a team that was ranked No. 2 three-quarters through the season. And there, on page 166, is Larry Johnson -- with “defensive end/special teams” listed under his name. His job title listed him as “Penn State defensive ends coach/special teams coordinator.”

I don’t do this to make Joe look silly. But if I have a responsibility to put Penn State’s graduation rate vis-a-vis the BCS standings into perspective, I need to do the same with the special teams. Especially when that aspect of Penn State’s game is so awful that the Nittany Lions are in the 20^th percentile or worse for almost every punting and kicking category in Division I-A.

Paterno’s not going to change a darn thing about his staff’s job responsibilities. At least now, anyway. Even moreso, he’s not going to sit back and tell the media, “You know, I’ve thought about it and Kermit Buggs is going to take over the special teams.”

Now when he reflects on the 2009 season and ponders what happened against Iowa and Ohio State, he may think otherwise. And when that time comes -- in the spring of 2011 -- he’ll let us all know what he thought.