Here are the FACTS from Ian Rapoport in the Boston Herald:

Apologetic New England Dairy Council on Patriots no-show: "We never promised a player."

I read with interest an article in the Norwich (Conn.) Bulletin about how the Patriots allegedly stood up a group of students at Lebanon Middle School who had participated in the NFL-sponsored Fuel up to Play 60 program.

The article states that students expected players to show up (like Laurence Maroney, right, did for a different event during the season) as their prize for winning an exercise participation initiative that tracks healthy eating run by the NFL, the New England Dairy Council and co-sponsored by the Patriots. Instead, they got “an intern and a video.”

It has since been picked up by a few national Web sites like this one and this one, all of whom agree – it sounds bad. No one wants to see disappointed kids who were told they would meet some real, live NFL players.

So, I figured I’d call a local spokesman with the National Dairy Council to find out what happened. Her response was, well, not what I’d thought it would be.

“Because of the wording from a (letter) we had sent out, someone at the school drew some false assumptions,” spokeswoman Jenny Bourbeau told me. “That letter may have led someone to believe, without actually saying it, that (there would be Patriots). But we never promised a player.”

There was never supposed to be a player, which is consistent with the rest of the NFL teams who put on the same event.

Turns out, because of vague language in a letter that has been used for years by the New England Dairy Council, a local physical education teacher made the assumption that players would show up when that wasn’t the plan. At 10 other stops with the same program — which allows children to play an virtual exercise-style game called Hopsports that resembles Dance Dance Revolution — it was supposed to be a team official who would administer the video.

Except in Lebanon, the kids were under a different assumption. They believe that Fred Taylor would arrive, potentially because the player seen in the flyer for the event looks like him.

“What we didn’t know was that for some reason, they thought the arrival of the Patriots Hops system meant that there was a Patriots player coming to the school,” Bourbeau said. “That was not the case.”

Apparently, the problem arose because the letter (with language that came off the Hops site) made mention of “celebrity coaches” to lead the fitness event, when that just means they’re on the video. That letter has been cleaned up going forward.

In the end, everyone feels bad.

“We are so embarrassed and I’ve apologized,” Bourbeau said. “I feel so bad for the school that there was this big misunderstanding. We’re working with the school to find a way to make this right to make sure this misunderstanding doesn’t happen again.”