You raise some good well measured points/responses but to me it DOES mean silence as to the likes of Sandusky. Schools DID ‘squeal’ on other schools. It/that did happen. If Joe was not gonna ‘blow the whistle’ on someone/something as so insignificant, (really, compared to child rape), as other schools violating C/S recruiting rules then no way in heck was he gonna do anything about this mess. A mess that would have lead to the destruction of Penn State. After Paterno “reported the problem”, what/how did he follow it up to ensure something was indeed done or in the works? I’m asking, I really do not know.
In our court systems, we indulge the obvious fiction that each person is presumed to know the law. Easy enough for judges to say. Whether their families eat does not depend on the ordinary citizen's failure to understand the intricacies of our law. Since laws reproduce like rabbits and the shelves of law books, statute books, court decisions, regulations grow and grow much too fast for lawyers to keep up with the changes, how do we expect civilians with real jobs in the real world not in the legal profession to do better?
I doubt that Paterno understood the law any better than most busy people do.
A common saying is that there is honor among thieves, i.e. they don't report one another to the police (or the NCAA by analogy) for what they all do (which is why we call them thieves). It is a relatively innocent vice not to report each other for petty crime.
Child rape is NOT a petty crime as I am sure you will agree. It is also not a crime common to all football coaches or so we may reasonably hope. If Paterno told SI that he had never ratted anyone out and was not about to start now, I bet that the murder of his secretary in his sight by her estranged husband would have been reported by Paterno. Likewise the anal rape of a child in his presence. But the crimes charged here, by their very nature, were not in his presence.
Your last question is as to what he did to follow up to see something was done. Whether he knew the law or not, the law allowed him to contact Curley and to ask what had been done. Curley was required to make a report within 24 hours of receiving a report from a mandated reporter and, IIRC, to answer that reporter's questions as to what had been done.
Penn State has been humiliated. Sandusky is sentenced effectively to spend the rest of his life in the Pennsylvania hoosegow, probably suffering the, ummm, special attention of Big Bubba and his fellow prisoners. They may have to put him in solitary or give him bodyguards. Prison is a dismal place for people sent up on kiddyraper beefs. Even bigtime assistant football coaches. Joe Paterno is dead of lung cancer. And yet the Penn State football program is alive and well.
It is the NCAA starring in run for its life.