Executives at competing networks have watched their handling of the could-be candidates with some astonishment.
Will your team take a risk on this could-be superstar playmaker who surely will be a project and might never make it at all?
When he was a teenager, he was inseparable from his best friend and could-be lover, Silvy.
I had a couple of disasters, but I came out better than if I was retiring today and all these would-be, could-be fund managers were in charge of my money.
A group of young men arrived all dressed to the nines with those sort of messed-up, could-be-70s haircuts.
He collects stories, from passengers, of could-be weapons - scissors, nail files - that slipped through security.
Reality is Bowie's umpteenth record and while it doesn't even come close to capturing the energy or sexiness of his early works, there are some could-be classics on this all-over-the-map release.
My first idea wasn't that great since it was, in a sense, excluding a group of could-be customers.