STATE COLLEGE - A capsule look at Joe Paterno's weekly press conference.

Reading material: JoePa is always very interesting when he's not talking about football. Tuesday he got into how he feels about newspapers. He was asked about his team being ranked No. 5 and said, "I get the paper. I go to the bathroom. I take the paper in there and I scan it. I look at it. The first thing I do is look at who died. All right. Second thing I look at are headlines. Something that says 'Paterno is the greatest,' I read it. If it says I'm a bum, I don't even look at it." He then told a story about newspaper bias and left on this joke: "That's a speech. I usually get 100 bucks for that."

No sense of urgency: The conference season is one week away, but Paterno denied anyone is looking ahead. "We've got Temple to play," he said. "You guys can speculate. You can talk about this and different things that are going to happen this week, next week, what happened last week kind of stuff. We really don't talk about that. I'm just trying to get our kids [focused on Temple]."

Positives and negatives: Paterno said his players are "starting to play with some poise." Something he's disappointed about, though, is that his strong defense hasn't forced many turnovers. "Only had three turnovers in two games," he said. Kickoff coverage also has been suspect. "Gotta do better. Better do better," Paterno said.

Not exactly a Temple of doom: The Owls are coached by former PSU player and assistant Al Golden, and Paterno has always been complimentary of the program and coach. "His kids have come back and been competitive, and that's what we're going to see this week," Paterno said. "Al has not lost control of his football team. They're well coached and disciplined. At times maybe they've had some bad luck. But if you don't lose your poise and you don't start panicking, those things start to level off a little bit."

Praise for Quarless: Tight end Andrew Quarless has had his share of problems in his career, but JoePa praised the senior. "He's grown up," the coach said. "He was a pain in the backside for a while, but he's grown up. He's a good tight end right now. He's on the verge of being better than good."

Personnel matter: Paterno said junior defensive tackle Tom McEowen has been hurt and probably will redshirt.