It’s difficult for me to believe this story, but it amuses me all the same. On the Micheal Irvin Show yesterday, former Cowboys defensive linebacker Greg Ellis was complaining about his “diminished role” on the team last season, and eventually — get ready — told the tale of The Most Selfless Hide-And-Seek Game Ever.

“It’s a disgrace when DeMarcus Ware comes off the field just so I can get in the game and when the coaches tell him to come on the field, he tries to hide so I can play,” Ellis said on Irvin’s show.

Whoa, dude. I like to think I have my share of impressive hide-and-seek stories (one time I removed the contents of a refrigerator, took out the shelves, and hid in it), but I concede the prize to you.

All right, full disclosure. I didn’t hide in the fridge; that was actually the kid down the street who could burp the alphabet. And I suspect that Ellis’ story doesn’t have a lot of merit either. Both Ellis and Ware started all 16 games from the Cowboys last season. From the Dallas Morning News:

Ware rarely sat out a defensive snap with the exception of late in the Thanksgiving win over the Seahawks, when he suffered a knee injury.

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DeMarcus Ware, or at least someone pretending to be the Cowboys defensive stud, tweeted recently that he and the ‘Boys were “getting close” on a contract extension.

Turns out that, um, this is awkwardly fake news. See, Ware’s account is not Ware at all. And likely just some Internet prankster person. In all likelihood, a pantsless blogger hellbent on bringing down society one tweet at a time.

The real DeMarcus Ware informed Todd Archer via text message that the person posing as him on Twitter is an imposter.

So today’s posts about Ware and the Cowboys “getting close” on contract negotiations mean nothing.

OK, so this isn’t good. I mean, whenever someone impersonates another person, it’s never a good thing. That’s called identity theft. But this is also why people always think long and hard about actually verifying athletes on Twitter before they start to follow them and believe every word they say to be the gospel of what’s going on in the sports world.

Of course, this will probably be made out to be far worse than it actually is: such is the case with new media and bloggers all over the land. (Note that here, “bloggers” means “any social trend that old people don’t understand but associate with blogs because they’re the newest and most scariest of all things that the Internet has created and therefore must receive backlash.”)

But for now, just avoid following any famous athlete on Twitter that you don’t know is for real. Otherwise, you might get tricked into thinking something that’s not true.