Yup. JoePa already donned a police cap when he let it be known that he would "self-police" his players when they got in trouble.
(Sandusky, who saw that happen repeatedly when he was JoePa's sidekick, was counting on exactly that "performance" from Paterno when it applied to his campus "excursions")
The Alumni is simply showing the exact same thing that got them into the fix -- "Let's have a winning football program at any cost & the rest of things be damned!" (This is otherwise known Biblically as a spirit of defiance...something that at times has drawn temporal judgment from God Himself)
There's no contrition among many of these Alumni.
They only want to park the blame on the perp only (+ the Board of Trustees for not bowing down to their tantrum-tossing), unaware that the spirit of a place is what oft allows the creepy things to live there hospitably.
By April of 2012, per Business Insider in an article where they labeled the Penn State cover-up THE BIGGEST PR disaster of 2012, the campus had hired "Edelman and La Torre for crisis management in April 2012. The school pledged to spend $208,000 a month for 12 months on PR support, but the damage was done."
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/biggest-pr-disasters-of-2012-2012-11?op=1#ixzz2NEwFqxfE
Chronological Chart of Sanduskys Abuse from the 2010 Grand Jury Presentment:
Victim 7 - Abused 1997 in PSU pool.
Victim 10 Abused 1997-1999 in pool and Sanduskys home
Victim 4 - Abused 1998-2000 in various locations.
Victim 6 - Single shower incident 1998.
Victim 5 - Single shower incident 1998.
Victim 3 - Abused 2000 at Sandusky home & in shower.
Victim 8 - Abused PSU shower 2000, Victim has not been identified, only by hearsay witness.
Victim 2 Abused PSU shower 2001 - witnessed by McQueary reported by PSU officials, who reported it to Second Mile.
(Four years of apparent stop of abuse.)
Aaron Fisher (Victim 1) Abused 2005-2008 at Sanduskys home & CMHS.
Victim 9 Abused 2006-2009 at Sanduskys home