So I’m just coming off one of those three-week staycations that those of us whose goal is to win the lottery and remove ourselves from the grid can only dream about.

Actually, between power outages, shoveling sessions and hours spent bundled up in a parka and praying for the space heaters not to trip the circuit breakers, it felt like three months.

There was ample time available for two activities: Thinking too much, and watching football.

I’ve known throughout my entire life that all the other sports in North America are in a perennial steel-cage match for a distant second place. The second half of December and the first week of January reminded me how big a gap it is.

It’s a Grand Canyon. It’s like the height of the seizure-inducing giant screen above the field where the Cowboys choke — um, I mean play — times the width of Jerry Jones’ ego, times infinity.

We have two sports seasons. Football, and waiting for football.

No, really. Nothing approaches this game and its alluring mix of unpredictability and urgency.

Old-timers and old-schoolers swear by baseball. Oh, please. The obsessive posturing and pitching changes fueled by overanalysis have dragged out the average nationally televised game to nearly four hours, doubling the requisite spitting and scratching. And that’s only in the center field grandstands.

A small but vociferous delegation in our perma-frozen neck of the woods will stand in front of a train to defend the incomparability of playoff hockey.

I might concede that point, but still, said playoffs occupy more than two months of calendar space. Most of it isn’t must-see TV, because there’s another game tomorrow night. Every series is best-of-seven. There are no dire consequences if your team trips over itself today, because there’s likely another chance to get it right. Or two. Or six.

College basketball’s March Madness is only an attraction because it gives you a chance to fill out a bracket and demonstate how much you don’t know. And the reason you don’t know is that you don’t watch more than two minutes of any game from November through February.

Football is perfectly packaged. One game per week, typically played on days when most of us have nothing better to do than rake leaves, shoot Bambi or clear our roof. Twelve games for Division I colleges. Sixteen for the pros.

Then come the bowls, or the playoffs, for those of us who like our championships won in the light of day and not by secret ballot. Either way, it’s a win-or-else situation, cultivating an environment no “series” can touch.

Andrew Luck and the Indianapolis Colts rallied from a 38-10 deficit to an unthinkable 45-44 victory over the shellshocked Kansas City Chiefs in Saturday’s wild-card opener.

The Ponies play on. The Native Americans are on the draft clock. And the Luck-led comeback immediately and permanently takes its place alongside Bills-Oilers 1993 in sports lore. There’s no danger of it becoming the equivalent of a Bernie Carbo or Carlton Fisk home run, rendered all but meaningless by a Big Red Machine series-clinching win 24 hours later.

One week earlier, of course, there were no fewer than four of those now-or-never games. All determined at least one team’s playoffs-or-not fate, and most of them ended in the window between 6:45 and 7:45 p.m. on Sunday evening. It was, without even token competition, the best hour of sports television in 2013.

Football remains the one professional sport in which you can lose two-thirds of your starting lineup to some combination of free agency, catastrophic knee and foot injuries or first-degree murder charges and still run away from your division. The sequence and cadence of the games make coaching, cohesion and depth more significant than in any other realm.

Even football’s worst and most outdated contribution to the sports calendar — the glut of college bowls — has been riveting. Heavy underdogs Central Florida, Oklahoma and Clemson won the headliners. You even had to watch the second-tier scraps for fear of missing something. It was there that Johnny Manziel solidified his legend with a 21-point comeback of his own.

It all leads up to tonight’s Florida State-Auburn showdown for what is (hallelujah) the final mythical “BCS” title in history. If you don’t think it’s going to be something special, you haven’t been paying attention.

Then we get three more NFL weekends, each wait more agonizing than the last.

If what I’ve seen during my 21-day respite from the gyms and ice rinks of Southwestern Maine was any indication, it’ll be well worth it. And better than anything we’ll see until the leaves reappear and change their colors again.

Kalle Oakes is a staff columnist. His email is koakes@sunjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @Oaksie72.