Joe Paterno was in a joking mood at yesterday's press conference, grinning away while nearly everything proceeded to go wrong.

The media on teleconference couldn't hear Paterno. And after a series of "Hello's?" on the loudspeaker, the Penn State football coach made his first of many wisecracks.

"Hello yourself -- call my wife, will ya, for crying out loud," he said, laughing.

"It's just my Brooklyn accent. They don't understand me, that's all."

At one point, Paterno threw his arms in the air, sounding like an excited Regis Philbin, filling the room with a boisterous, "Can everybody hear me? Can you hear me?"

After switching microphones, Paterno attempted to settle down for his second press conference of the season.

That didn't happen to last too long either.

One tape recorder -- which was in the "play" position instead of "record" -- distracted the 79-year-old coach since it was playing his last teleconference.

"You guys are tough. I'm gonna go home, go back to bed," he said.

Obviously, Paterno is hoping for a lot fewer mistakes this weekend when his team takes on No. 4 Notre Dame.

Paterno had plenty of praise for Notre Dame coach Charlie Weis, quarterback Brady Quinn and "that wideout whose name I can't pronounce [Jeff Samardzija]," saying the Fighting Irish's lack of scoring against Georgia Tech was probably because of bad field position.

"They're such a good, balanced football team," Paterno said.

"And against Georgia Tech, they played better defensively than when they played against Ohio State."

The Italian-Catholic surprised some by saying he tried to get his oldest son, Dave, to attend Notre Dame. Problem was, Paterno said, Dave never made it to the campus because he got sick in the hotel after a flight on a small plane.

And when asked if he was a Notre Dame fan back in his Brooklyn days in the 1930s -- or if that was just the Irish kids -- Paterno responded with another memorable one-liner.

"You know, that's an ethnic question, and I'm going to have the ACLU get a hold of you," Paterno joked.

"I think everybody in the old days and even anybody that's been a Catholic kid growing up ... Notre Dame was something special."

As far as how the team's progressing after week one, Paterno said he had an old saying: "A good football team gets better from the first to the second football game more than any other time during the year."

And, according to Paterno, the Nittany Lions won't have to play without fifth-year senior defensive end Jim Shaw who "should be OK."

Austin Scott, however, was a bit more of a question mark.

"We've got to come to a decision whether we're going to play him or not because I don't wanna -- unless he's going to have an impact on this season, I don't particularly wanna play him," Paterno said.

"Am I going to redshirt him? I don't know."

And while Scott's status this weekend is unknown, Paterno's involvement in scheduling the Notre Dame game also remains unknown.

"I dunno whether I was involved in it or not," he said.

"Probably, someone 10 years ago said, 'Hey, what do you want to do in 2006?' -- I said I want to fish."