Open Letter to Joe Paterno Supporters: How Do You Think He'll Be Exonerated?

Dear Joe Paterno supporters,

Things are getting pretty combative out there, and not just from you folks. The legacy of your hero, the patriarch of a society that you treasure, is under serious assault, and you don't think it should be. You reacted strongly and vocally when Paternoville was renamed Nittanyville without anybody consulting you. You're not convinced by the Freeh Report, and you're upset at how many people accept its conclusions as fact. You believe the truth has yet to be told.

This feels like a way of life is being taken away from you, and you feel like you're being railroaded in the process. So it's either protest and fight or have a piece of you just taken away, and you choose to protest however you can. I get that. I understand.

And I certainly understand that you probably feel directly threatened by (per ESPN.com) some anonymous group flying a plane over Happy Valley trying to force Penn State to take down the Paterno statue. That only makes the entire situation more toxic. That doesn't help convince you of anything other than that you need to fight back. 

But there's an aspect to this mindset, a common article of faith that I don't understand, and I'd like to have it explained. The underlying theme to this all isn't that what Joe Paterno is accused of doing wasn't bad enough to warrant this reaction. It's that the allegations are either false or being wildly and maliciously misrepresented.

And so when someone asks in the Paternoville/Nittanyville Facebook thread, "Will you change it back to Paternoville when JVP's name is eventually cleared?" and 18 people "like" the question in approval, it's clear that this is a fairly widespread view that's held among certain Penn State fans. My question is this: How?

This is a serious question, and one that I haven't seen an answer to yet. I don't know the road map to exoneration—or, at the very least, a restoration of Paterno's name. I don't know where the tide of public opinion is going to be turned back.

I will say this, and you're probably not going to like it. Whatever the Paterno family does with the Freeh investigation information isn't the answer. No interpretation of the facts we already know that comes from someone with the last name of "Paterno" is going to convince a large segment of the population that Joe Paterno's innocent. We're just past that.

So where does the good news come from? What, specifically, are you expecting to happen? And because I really want the answer to this question, I am begging you, commenters, do not chime in if you have something awful to say or just to insult the Paterno supporters, no matter how low an opinion you have of them. You can do that pretty much anywhere else this is being discussed on the Internet. And you're doing a thorough job of it already, at that.

No, I am genuinely interested in the opinions of the Paterno supporters here and I'd like the comment thread to be a relatively safe place for them to simply lay out where they're coming from and what they expect to happen next. Because right now, I just don't see the same light at the end of the tunnel that they do. Not at all.

So tell me.