Maury Povich is pulling back the curtain on just how deeply his long-running daytime talk show embedded itself into sports culture.
In a new interview with Angela Yee, the legendary host revealed that Shaquille O'Neal, his friends, and several NFL players would regularly place bets on the outcome of the paternity test segments that became a staple of Maury. Povich's show, which ran for more than three decades, became known for its explosive reveals and unforgettable catchphrases like "You are not the father."
"I know a lot of NFL players watch the show and stuff like that and all of them tell me they're in the locker room during the morning," Povich said. "My show's on the air, the coaches are up on the field with their whistles trying to get them up, and they won't come up till they find out who the father is. And then Shaq used to tell me that he and his buddies bet on whether they were the father or not."
It's not the first time Povich has acknowledged the sports-like atmosphere around his show. Povich spoke about it on his own podcast, On Par, and during an appearance on Tim Graham And Friends in 2024, he compared the drama of lie detector tests and paternity reveals to athletic competition.
"Yeah there's a lot to that especially with the result — whether it's a lie detector result, whether it's a paternity result," Povich explained."If they had an attraction to the show it's because they thought the same way … that this was not necessarily a sport but it was a contest, and so therefore they were attracted to it."