B&C’s Marisa Guthrie writes about the “enormous national platform” being afforded Fox News Channel next weekend: a chance to “showcase its political chops on Super Bowl Sunday.”

As TVNewser reported earlier this month, Shepard Smith will host a 2-hour news/politics show at 10amET on the Fox network this Sunday; two days before Super Tuesday. “The groundwork for the special was laid back in 2006 when the station division and FNC worked together to cover the mid-term elections,” writes Guthrie, who interviewed Fox Stations Group head Dennis Swanson.

In his story about this merger of football and politics, The NYTimes’ David Carr writes, “Say what you like about Fox, they really know how to make a handoff. Just as American Idol ran interference for the startup of The Moment of Truth, so the Super Bowl will serve as a vigorous lead-in to Super Tuesday. Touch that dial and you might get tackled.”

“There has been this aligning of planets,” Marty Ryan, FNC’s EP of politics tells Carr, “We have 22 states and two competitive elections. That is the first time that has happened in 50 years and it takes place just two days after the Super Bowl.”