Shaquille O'Neal — role model?

Specifically, role model for obese kids?

Well, yes. The basketball star — who has been criticized at various times for his own weight — is the host and executive producer of "Shaq's Big Challenge" (Tuesday, 8 p.m., Ch. 4), a six-episode prime-time series on ABC that takes six overweight middle-school kids and tries to show them how to shape up. And, in the process, shows kids all across the country how to do the same.

For a guy who has, at times, been known for his giant ego, this TV incarnation of Shaq is an unremittingly great guy. The show is much less about "Shaq" than it is about the "Big Challenge."

It doesn't ignore the fact that he's a huge star in the sports world, but it uses that fact to do something other than just inflate O'Neal's reputation and his ego. He genuinely seems concerned about the problem of childhood obesity in general and the six kids on the show in particular.

"It was very emotional," O'Neal said in a teleconference with TV critics. "When I first took on the thing ... I said, 'OK, I could take six kids and get them to work out every day,' but it's beyond that. It's their attitudes, their mental (state), what they're getting fed in schools, what's going on in the schools."

He said he was surprised not only at the unhealthy nature of much of what kids are fed in school cafeterias, but that only 6 percent of American schools have mandatory physical education today.

O'Neal insists he's never been overweight — he's a "freak of nature when it comes to basketball. They've never seen a specimen of my sort. ... When they considered me big and heavy, that was when I was most dominant winning championships. I've never been overweight. I've always had less than 14 percent body fat."

But he can identify with overweight kids because "I can relate to that, being tall and looking kind of awkward ... I know what you're going through, because it's what I had to go through."

For any athlete to be on TV doing good, not making it all about him, is nothing short of astonishing. And commendable.

THE PARALLELS between the National Hockey League and the Mountain West Conference are almost eerie — and not just because they both have games on cable channel Versus.

Columnist Bob Smizik of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette wrote a column headlined "NHL needs to get back on ESPN," and if you substitute MWC for NHL, you'll hear the same arguments that many fans have made about the Mountain West's deal with CSTV/The mtn:

It's pretty obvious the NHL made a mistake in leaving ESPN, which had the option to pick up its coverage of the NHL for the 2005-06 season but insisted on slashing what it would pay for the product. ... The league got more money from Versus — although nothing substantial — but the switch was as much about being treated with respect and being the No. 1 client.