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The Jets and owner Woody Johnson are right that the NFL's coin flip to decide who gets to open new stadium should have been held in public, but misinformation campaign is out of line.

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As we zoom along in the internet age, sports fans need to become warier about their sources of information. Not all news is valid news. If they required reminding of that, they got it last week when the Jets reportedly faked a leak on their Web site to advance their own agenda.

The team posted a story on NewYorkJets.com stating there would be a coin flip, perhaps in public, to decide whether the Giants or Jets opened the new stadium. Sources told our Gary Myers, however, the NFL previously had informed the Jets they had lost a privately-held coin toss. The Jets were basically campaigning for a do-over on their Web site, with misinformation.

The Jets surely were right about the coin flip issue. The toss should have been held in public. But the NFL is addicted to exactly this sort of paranoid privacy, and the Jets have contributed to that culture for years whenever they have limited media access to players and coaches. There's nothing new there.

The groundbreaking precedent in this instance was a team using its Web site to knowingly disseminate false news. Reporters, including this one, make mistakes all the time. And we have all become familiar with the use of spin, when it comes to manipulating statistics to prove a point.

The Jets' affair, however, is different. If this was not simply a matter of bad communication between team departments, then it is something far worse: false propaganda, possibly emanating from Jets owner Woody Johnson himself, and a breach of trust with the club's famously loyal fans.

Every team in every league in this country now runs its own Web site, and is using it more often to break news, or offer statements by club officials who don't wish to be interviewed elsewhere. Bad news is most painlessly dispensed in dribbles, on weekends, and so it is no longer uncommon to read for the first time on a team Web site about a season-ending diagnosis for a star player.

In this case, the news was so abhorrent to the Jets, that the Jets changed the news.

When they click on these Web sites, fans need to understand they may not be getting the whole story. In some cases, apparently, they may even be getting the wrong story on purpose.

THE SCORE HEARS ...

By Ebenezer Samuel, Michael O'Keeffe & Mark Lelinwalla

Ochocinco's love and madness

Chad Ochocinco will show off his dance steps when he appears in the season premiere of "Dancing With the Stars" Monday night, but that won't be the Cincinnati Bengal wideout's only TV appearance this offseason.

In July, Ochocinco will search for the love of his life in a new VH1 reality show called "The Tournament." Don't expect this to be a "Bachelor" clone, though, because Ocho is no Jesse Palmer. In keeping with his eccentric ways, the 32-year-old father of four will use a nationwide tourney to find that special someone.