The annual "Dubious Dozen" of the sports media can only have 12 finalists -- hence, the name -- so here are some that were worth noting again, but couldn't quite stumble their way into the big time:

NOT ENOUGH FLUFF:
The culprit: "ESPN Hollywood"
The crime: In Aug., 2005, ESPN2 launched a "signature show" with a $15 million budget, calling it "Entertainment Tonight" meets "SportsCenter." Co-host Thea Andrews (pictured) said of the show's content: “I’m blown away by how much great material we’ve had during rehersals. The only problem we’ll have isn’t sustaining it, but what we’re going to turn away.��? Former "Saved by the Bell" actor Mario Lopez was the other co-host.
The aftermath: By January, 2006, the show ran out of steam and was canceled. “Our research and the ratings clearly suggest that a daily show may have been to much,��? said John Skipper, ESPN’s vice president of content.

DON'T HIT 'SEND' SO FAST:
The culprit: Eric Govan, Golden State Warriors public relations assistant.
The crime: In February, he forwarded an e-mail to about 100 national media outlets entitled "Ghetto Prom," which featured 17 pictures of African-Americans students dressed in various formal skin-tight clothes, with comments about their appearances. Govan accidently forwarded the e-mail to the team's weekly distribution list. He e-mailed that list again about 20 minutes later to apologize.
The aftermath: The team fired him, citing an "extreme poor taste and completely unprofessional" action, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

WHEN YOU ASSUME ...
The culprit: Jim Kleinpeter.
The crime: Last week, the college football writer for the New Orleans Times-Picayune was dropped from voting in the Associated Press Top 25 poll because someone noticed that he curiously dropped Oklahoma from No. 15 to No. 24 on his ballot, even though the Sooners (8-2) defeated Texas Tech 34-24. Kleinpeter, covering the Alabama-LSU game that weekend, said as he was mulling over his ballot, he couldn’t find the Oklahoma-Texas Tech score. Someone told him Oklahoma lost. He couldn’t find a result the next day in a local paper. So that’s the info he went with.
The aftermath: “It was my fault,��? Kleinpeter said. “I probably had other avenues I could have gone to get the score, but I usually rely on the morning paper here in Baton Rouge. And for some reason, they didn’t have the score. I looked all through it.��?

TRY STUB-HUB NEXT TIME:
The culprit: The Ventura County Star managing editor Richard Luna.
The crime: He reportedly pressured a staff sports reporter to obtain a press credential for him to attend two Final Four college basketball games in March, even though Luna wasn't covering the event. Publisher and president Tim Gallagher admitted to Editor & Publisher magazine that the paper was investigating.
The aftermath: Luna told E&P: "I did accept a credential for an event that I wasn't covering, and that was wrong. I'm very, very sorry for what has happened." He resigned from the newspaper in May.

STU'S TOO COOL:
The culprit: ESPN's Stuart Scott
The crime: ABC recruited him to host the David Blane special (see the YouTube video above), where the illusionist tried to stay underwater in a bubble. In Scott's regular column in ESPN The Magazine, a reader asked him if he thought Blane would have set a record for holding his breath? "Yes, I did," Scott wrote. "But imagine what a challenge it was, after he’d been underwater for a week and then had to escape from chains. One of the gutsiest things I’ve seen. He didn’t go nine minutes, but anyone who says Blane failed would have the warped view that an Olympic silver medal is failure, too. Not another person on earth could have done what Blaine did."
The aftermath: In June, ABC recruited him again, to host "America's Funniest Home Videos: Sports Edition," as a lead-in to him co-hosting the network's coverage of Game 4 of the NBA Finals between Miami and Dallas.
In a somewhat related response, SI.com’s Peter McEntegart wrote on July 7 what he’d do if he was commissioner of sports TV: "Show game highlights on SportsCenter. Remember when this show recapped the day in sports rather than provided 60 minutes of Stand-Up at the Improv? This means no more Poetry Jams, no Budweiser Hot Seats and no Fact or Fiction from two ex-jocks stuffed into suits who pretend to argue. Instead, how aobut we see the key plays from the games played that day without the omnipresent hard sell for ESPN Mobile? Boo-yeah? Boo-no."

TOO FAST, TOO FURIOUS:
The culprit: Amazon.com
The crime: Before the UCLA-Florida NCAA men's basketball championship game, the online retailer sent out an e-mail to customers offering Bruins championship caps and other goods. Florida won the game.
The aftermath: An Amazon spokesperson, Patty Smith, speculated the mistake may have been made by some Bruins fans with a case of wishful thinking, the Associated Press reported.

A PAINFUL ENDING:
The culprit: Keith Mills, a sports anchor at WMAR-TV, Baltimore's ABC affiliate.
The crime: Was arrested in January and charged with stealing perscription pain killers from his neighbor.
The aftermath: In May, Mills was sentenced to nine months house arrest. During that time, he was hired as a freelance reporter on a local radio show and, in July, was hired by a public relations firm that handles Cal Ripken Jr.'s endeavors.

COTE VS. CUBAN:
The culprit: Miami Herald columnist Greg Cote.
The crime: In his June 19 column during the NBA finals between Dallas and Miami, Cote reported near the end that Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, upset that his team was behind 3-2 in the series, went to referee Joe DeRosa after the Heat's Game 5 loss and screamed profanities, before turning to NBA comissioner David Stern and other NBA officials seated at the scorer's table "and was overheard to shout venomously in the jubilant din, '[Bleep] you! [Bleep] you! Your league is rigged!''
Cuban replied in his blog: "Apparently the Miami Herald is reporting i screamed at the NBA comissioner after the game the other night. Didnt happen. Didnt say a word to the man. Not a single word. And that was absolutely by intention. Apparently this “reporter��? has written he has several “sources��?. Well they must be the same sources the tabloids use to find two headed babys and aliens, because it didnt happen. Ive already blogged about and been fined for the source of my displeasure in these playoffs and there was absolutely no reason for me to say another word about it and i wont ... Chalk up some more great reporting to the Miami Herald. The source of phantom comments."
The aftermath: Cote responded on a local radio show that his source was “impeccable." But why then was it burned in his column?
Cote later blogged: "Someone near the scorer's table who said he heard Cuban say what I quoted him saying passed the information to someone I trust who informed me. My source in turn trusted the person who reported hearing it. For the record, I never believed Cuban actually believed the fix was on. I believed then, and do now, that, in context, an outspoken owner was venting in the heat of the moment at a raw, emotional time. In any case, however, I was wrong to use the quote. That doesn't mean the words were never said, denial notwithstanding. I was wrong, journalistically, to put quotation marks around words I did not personally hear. I would be wrong even if Cuban had not denied having said it."

'WEST WING' MEETS THE KENTUCKY DERBY:
The culprit: NBC Sports.
The crime: A freelance writer plagerized two passages from a 2002 episode of the NBC series "West Wing" during a short feature on Michael Matz, the trainer for Barbaro, jockey Alex Solis and Brother Derek's trainer, Dan Hendricks, during the network's Kentucky Derby coverage in May. The similarities between the Derby feature script and the script for the episode of "The West Wing," written by Aaron Sorkin, were discovered by a reader who sent an e-mail message to The New York Times.
The aftermath: Ken Schanzer, the president of NBC Universal Sports, told the N.Y. Times that the plagiarism had occurred. He would not identify the writer but said, "He won't work here anymore."

FOR REAL?
The culprit: Rusty and Leann Real of Biloxi, Miss.
The crime: In October, they named their new baby boy ESPN.
The aftermath: The middle name is Montana, after Joe Montana. The full name: ESPN (pronounced Espen) Montana Real. And this is hardly the first time a baby has been named after the all-sports station. In 2005, there was Espn McCall in Pampa, Tex.; Espn Curiel in Corpus Christi, Tex.; and Espn Blondeel in Michigan. "We were the talk of the hospital," Rusty Real told the Associated Press. "The nurses kept asking my wife if she was really going to let her husband name him ESPN. She said, 'Oh, yes.'"

AND IF YOU DIDN'T HEAR IT THE FIRST TIME ....
Those sportscasters who couldn't help but put their foot in their mouth, we have these to thank, in addition to Steve Lyons, Lamar Thomas, Keith Hernandez, Rick Sutcliffe and Bert Blyleven:
Tom Jackson: During a live September episode of ESPN’s “Sunday NFL Countdown,��? colleague Michael Irvin went on a rant about the opening night game played between Peyton Manning’s Indianapolis Colts and Eli Manning’s New York Giants. Finally, Jackson blurted out: “Are you retarded?��? ESPN and Jackson apologized.
Jay Bilas: During a January college basketball broadcast on ESPN, he suggested that the Kentucky team, after a visit from a sports psychologist, might next be taken to see the film “Brokeback Mountain��? and “have a good cry.��? One viewer complained: “I hope (Bilas) was not suggesting that a lack of toughness is somehow analogous to being homosexual. I found the remark not only tasteless but remarkably offensive.��? Bilas apologized.
Jason Stark: During the World Baseball Classic in March, the ESPN baseball analyst wrote in an online story about Japan’s win over Cuba that Cuba manager Higinio Velez, who used three pitchers in the first inning, “spent the first inning managing like his raft was on fire, and it didn’t work out too caliente.��? Stark apologized.
Ray Dunlap: A pit reporter for Speed Channel was taping a show segment with Nextel Cup driver Michael Waltrip and took issue with a claim that 10 percent of NASCAR fans were Hispanic and made a joke about it. He was suspended for one NASCAR Truck Series race for “making comments on-air that the company found inappropriate,��? although the comments never aired.
Brian Kinchen: A college football analyst for ESPNU, during a game in October between Iowa and Northern Illinois, was explaining how receivers need to catch with their hands because they are “tender��? and can “caress��? the ball. He then paused and said, “That’s kind of gay, but hey .��? Kinchen apologized and was suspended for one game.
Andy Furman: The longtime WLW-AM Cincinnati radio commentator called Bengals wide receiver T.J. Houshmandzadeh a “racist��? on Oct. 6, a day after the player failed to make a scheduled paid appearance on his show. Furman also accused Houshmandzadeh of calling him a “punk-ass white boy,��? according to the Cincinnati Enquirer. Houshmandzadeh denied the remark, but admitted: “I told him, ‘Andy Furman, you can f—- yourself.’ That’s the bottom line. And he twisted it into all whatever he wants to.��? Furman was fired by the station a month later.
Craig James: The ABC college football studio analyst, during halftime of the Penn State-Wisconsin contest on Nov. 4, said that Penn State coach Joe Paterno must have been upset at halftime because “his Geritol kick(ed) in.��? He also referred to Paterno as an “old fart.��? James later apologized on the air.
Michael Irvin: On Monday’s edition of Dan Patrick’s ESPN Radio show, the former Cowboys receiver and ESPN NFL GameDay analyst tried to joke about how Dallas quarterback Tony Romo, who is white, became such a great athlete: “(There must be) some brothers in that line somewhere . (maybe) his great, great, great Grandma ran over in the hood . (she) pulled one of them studs up outta the barn (and said) ‘Come here for a second’ back in the day.��? So far, no apology or comment from ESPN. Or a comment from Tom Jackson.