Well, former Penn State football player here so I guess if I'm going to contribute to a thread I might as well jump in here. Your claim that 90% of students at Penn State don't have an opinion about this case is just crazy. I have not met a Penn Stater (alumni or current student) who does not have some type of opinion regarding Joe.
Also, saying Paterno supporters are making the school look bad is ridiculous. I'm not sure how this gets lost in the shuffle so much but I'll make sure I get it out there - Jerry Sandusky made Penn State look bad. Jerry Sandusky violently molested children. Jerry Sandusky. Not Joe Paterno. Joe said he wished he could have done more. Who the fuck doesn't? Any rational person which understands what happened wishes they could have done more to stop it. One of the greatest tragedies with this is that so many different people knew just a little something about it and it somehow never got put together. And quite frankly, there's a lot of people to blame on that one - a guidance counselor who when told of abuse said Jerry had "a heart of gold," and wouldn't do that. An AD and University police chief that apparently didn't follow up the way they should have. And law enforcement finding that there wasn't enough evidence to proceed with arresting Sandusky in an earlier compliant.
Sometimes people who support Paterno can be a little misguided in how they present themselves. People in PA are passionate about football and a lot of them are passionate about Joe. Unless you've been there, you can't really grasp what he's done for that university. He did a lot of special things and people want and need to believe that he was who we thought he was. I support Joe. People ask me why? I tell them this: When I was a sophomore in college we had some screw ups on the team. Joe called a meeting and read us a letter that he had received that day from a former player with ALS telling him how much he loved Penn State and valued his time there - how it was a part of him. Joe finished reading the letter and said "This letter is why I have to do what I'm doing today. Because "this" is bigger than all of you, all the coaches, me. Bigger than all of us." And then he threw 3 of our best players off the team.
I wouldn't be where I am or who I am today without him. There's a reason this man has the kind of following and gets the support he does - he earned it many times over. Might want to keep that in mind as you don't have an opinion.