Since the Penn State child sexual abuse scandal became public late last year, when the eminent football coach Joe Paterno was fired for failing to do more to stop the convicted pedophile Jerry Sandusky, there has nonetheless been no shortage of support within the Penn State community for the man known affectionately as JoePa.


Some had hoped additional investigation would reveal a diminished level of wrongdoing by Mr. Paterno, who died in January. Others believed a more complete examination would depict any transgression by Mr. Paterno as a minor, one-time lapse.


But the release Thursday of the findings of an independent investigation of the scandal instead targeted Mr. Paterno along with three other senior university officials, blaming them for deliberately hiding facts about Mr. Sandusky’s predatory conduct for more than a decade. A new, pivotal finding of the investigation overseen by Louis J. Freeh, the former federal judge and director of the F.B.I., was that Mr. Paterno knew as early as 1998 that there were concerns about Mr. Sandusky’s inappropriate behavior with children. It spawned an internal review, which Mr. Freeh said Mr. Paterno followed closely. It was an investigation that Mr. Paterno, through his family after Mr. Sandusky’s arrest, previously maintained he knew nothing about.


These latest details stunned and saddened even those at the core of Mr. Paterno’s ardent fan base on the university’s campus in State College, Pa., where Mr. Paterno was long viewed as a benevolent, almost mythical father figure celebrated with ice cream flavors and sandwich shops named in his honor.


At the student center known as the HUB, about 20 students gathered before a second-floor large-screen television to view Mr. Freeh’s news conference, during which he emphatically implicated Mr. Paterno in a cover-up of Mr. Sandusky’s abuse.


One of those watching, Katie Wismer, a freshman from Easton, Pa., said she had expected bad news from the report although she held out hope for something else. What she found most disappointing, she said, was “that Joe didn’t do more. That Joe aspect just kind of broke my heart a little.”


Jessica Knoll, an 18-year-old incoming freshman, cried while watching the news conference.


“I was just really upset for the victims,” Ms. Knoll, of Lebanon, Pa., said. “That really got me, how the children — I’m an education major — had to suffer when they didn’t have to because of Paterno. I loved him so much, just the fact that he didn’t do more really hurt me.”


Ms. Knoll, who said attending Penn State had been a dream, added: “When someone like Joe Paterno — who I really looked up to — I originally thought he did all he could, but in the report it obviously wasn’t true. It was just really hurtful to hear what actually happened.”


The news about Mr. Paterno reverberated across the country. Nike announced it would change the name of the Joe Paterno Child Development Center, a child-care facility at the company’s headquarters in Beaverton, Ore.


“It is a terrible tragedy that children were unprotected from such abhorrent crimes,” said Mark Parker, Nike’s chief executive and president.


And Phil Knight, Nike’s founder, who defended Mr. Paterno at the coach’s memorial service in January, said in a statement: “It appears Joe made missteps that led to heartbreaking consequences. I missed that Joe missed it.”


The former Florida State coach Bobby Bowden, who is second behind Mr. Paterno in career major-college victories, said in a telephone interview that Penn State should remove a statue of Mr. Paterno that stands outside Beaver Stadium “for his family’s sake.”


“They’re going to have football games there and when people see the statue they’re going to think of the Sandusky stuff,” Mr. Bowden said, adding of Mr. Paterno, “It’s a shame that a guy does so many good things for such a long time and then something like this happens.”


Mr. Paterno’s family in recent months has begun an orchestrated effort to protect the once-luminous legacy of the coach, who not only won more football games than any major college coach but donated millions of dollars to foster academics and assiduously promoted Penn State as a place of righteousness and honor.