The sport of politics. The politics of sport.

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This is why Fox News Channel is so successful, especially with American men: its producers think of programming like today’s offering in the 10 a.m. to Noon time slot usually devoted to the networks’ Sunday morning political pundit-fests. Fox, which is broadcasting Super Bowl XLII, put together a two-hour show combining football and politics that made watching anything else beside the point – especially for Red Zone Politics fans.

“Fox Super Sunday” melded hype about today’s Super Bowl with hype about next week’s 24-state presidential primary blowout, “Super Tuesday.” The show featured politicians talking about football and football players weighing in on politics. We were in HEAVEN!

To Fox’s credit, the show featured plenty of female announcers to balance out the usual slate of guys. Two perky blondes from the Democratic and Republican strategic realms traded thoughts on the candidates’ campaign strategies and made their Super Bowl picks (they both went for the Giants). Fox host Bill Hemmer declared his belief in the Patriots (God bless him).

The show’s pace reflected the same adrenaline rush fans across the nation — along with Patriots and Giants players — are feeling as kickoff approaches. The producers covered a lot of bases. The Super Tuesday electoral map was compared to a football field, with each candidate’s strategy laid out like so many Xs and Os. Fox hosts didn’t so much discuss offense versus defense as the concept of competitive advantage: how to get it and how to keep it.

The NFL playoffs were compared to sort of a condensed version of the presidential primary season, with suggestions that John McCain’s come-from-behind surge could be compared the the Giants’ redemption from an initial 0-2 start in the regular season. Viewers were asked to choose their favorite presidential “Dream Team” tickets. It looked like Obama-Edwards and McCain-Huckabee were the No. 1 picks.

Fox co-host Megyn Kelly observed that the presidential race was about no less than “the fate of the free world.” More than 40 percent of the total available delegates are up for grabs on Tuesday.

On the Super Bowl side of the equation, the Patriots have a chance to make history as the first and only 19-0 team, while the Giants have the chance to bring about the biggest upset in the history of the NFL.

Fox hosts also focused on the concept of the “fumble” — specifically (as I discuss in my book, “Democrats in the Red Zone: an Independent voter’s take on the game of political perception”) making perceptual mistakes related to mismanaged public words and deeds by the candidates. Obama was credited with “owning the ‘hope’ rhetoric” as if he were holding onto the strategic football.

There was a hilarious segment where Fox’s Brian Wilson, dressed in full referee regalia, went through a series of hypothetical calls against the candidates or their surrogates, complete with creative hand gestures: “Too much hair gel” (Romney), “Inappropriate use of Oprah” (Obama) and “Unexpected time out” (referring to former President Bill Clinton nodding off during a tribute to Martin Luther King).

Some people will be surprised that several Patriots and Giants players were actually willing to discuss politics. Giants wide receiver Amani Toomer expressed his support for Obama, while Patriots wideout Wes Welker thought McCain had “the right stuff.” Pats’ safety Ray Vandrone, who comes from a Union family, gave props to Hillary Clinton. The Pats’ Chad Jackson was still on the fence after watching the Democratic debate in Los Angeles.

The show also went around the political “league” to find elected officials who had been former pro football players. It became obvious that knowing how to talk a good game is an asset in Congress. For their own sake, I hope female politicians were watching.

The tackiest part of the show was having two Hooters girls take the controls of a playstation-style Super Bowl game. There were several gratuitous shots of the women with their backs to the camera, butts aglow in bright orange short shorts. I wonder how the “family values” crowd Fox supposedly caters to felt about that little setup.

I traveled around the networks during commercial breaks, where the likes of Bob Shrum, Dee Dee Myers, and the James Carville-Mary Matalin tag team gave their assessments of the presidential race. Those programs were absolutely overshadowed by the super-sized show put on by Fox.

Just one Republican and one Democrat at the presidential level actually made appearances, toward the end of the Foxtravaganza: the present occupant of the White House, George W. Bush, and Democratic contender Obama, who was looking forward to “chili and beer” at his family’s Super Bowl gathering.

Obama has shown strategic smarts by showing up not only today on Fox, but last year on Monday Night Football to root on his home team Chicago Bears. With the Giants facing the challenge of their careers, we could only wonder: Where was Hillary?

Yours Truly, A.F. Cook