`The Biggest Loser' had been taken

While Kobe Bryant is spending his summer vacation trying to get traded, ex-Laker Shaquille O'Neal is busy promoting the effort to reduce childhood obesity with an upcoming ABC reality show, "Shaq's Big Challenge."

O'Neal, who said he was no longer a pitchman for Burger King, worked with six youngsters ages 11 to 14 who weighed from 182 to 285 pounds. And he blames childhood obesity more on inactivity than fast food. Only 6% of schools have mandatory physical education classes, O'Neal noted, down from 80% when he was growing up.

"We live in a society now where it's easy to eat a bag of chips or watch TV, easy to eat a bag of chips and play with your PlayStation," O'Neal said. "It's easy to eat a bag of doughnuts and just sit down and not do anything. But if you're going to put wrong foods in your body, and you're active, then, you know, most of the time you can overcome what you put in your body."

Still, an Orlando Sentinel blogger did some math: At 7 feet 1 and 335 pounds, O'Neal is obese by at least one standard, with a body-mass index of 32.6. (A BMI 30 or higher is considered obese.) By another measure, O'Neal is more impressive. He said his body fat is below 14%.

"I've been a freak of nature when it comes to basketball," he said. "They've never seen a specimen of my sort

Nope. There's definitely only one Shaq.

Trivia time

This week, sprinter Bryshon Nellum of Long Beach Poly High was named the Gatorade national boys' track and field athlete of the year.

What Los Angeles-area sprinter won the girls' award in 2003?

Best left ignored

Like the rest of us, Jay Leno can't resist an easy mark, needling Kobe in his "Tonight Show" monologue Thursday: "Guess you've heard by now, the bad news is there's a video of Kobe Bryant trashing his fellow Lakers. The good news? This is the first evidence that Kobe's even aware there's other members on the team."

Hail, hail, Internet U

The hiring of Reggie Theus as coach of the Sacramento Kings after two seasons at New Mexico State seemingly puts an end to the dream of coaching at his alma mater

No, no, not Nevada Las Vegas. He left there without graduating, later earning his degree from California Coast University, a distance-education institution based in Orange County.

At least if California Coast had a team, the basketball players wouldn't be the only ones who couldn't find their way to a classroom.