It turns out, for at least a few weeks, I’m saved from the winter doldrums after all.

Just last month, I was mourning the near end of football season, officially wrapped up last Sunday night with an underwhelming Super Bowl, and wondering what sport could fill the void left bty the end of seasonal pigksins action.

But, lo and behold, I had forgotten the Olympics were upon us.

That’s right, the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympucs states last week with the usual televised spectacle and then the athletes got right into the action, as figure skating, skiing, snowboarding and, yes, even curling, kicked off the first week of winter sports action.

The Olympics are a fascinating event to watch every two years, as they alternate between winter and summer sports. Much like the World Cup—the only soccer event I ever reliably watch, coming around every four years to get me into futbol for roughly three weeks and then departing and taking my interest with it—the arrival of the Olympics marks the onset of obsessing over sports I never even think about at any other time.

I watched ice dancing the other night, for crying out loud. Which is like the solid water version of synchronized swimming, I suppose. It’s more art than sport, really, despite the scoring system.

But they give a medal for it and it’s on TV, and so I watched it, pretending for an evening I knew what the event actually called for in the way of technique.

Last Monday, I spent half of my lunch break watching the Americans take on the Italians in curling, a sport that seems to have been almost certainly invented by drunks with a lot of rocks and ice and free time and nothing else. 

But, for half an hour, I was admiring the precision with which these Olympic athletes pushed stones down the ice with brooms and enjoying myself. 

The Olympics are, really, one of the most perfect sporting events in the world, in that way. 

They don’t outlast their welcome—at only two weeks, you can temporarily obsess over dozens of events, then wrap it all off with another bit of weird spectacle and put the Olympics away for another long while. 

Compare that to baseball season, which seemingly lasts forever. Do they really need to play that many games? By the time the World Series rolls around, I hardly want to hear the word baseball for the next six months. 

The Olympics also have variety on their side. 

Not interested in the oddities of curling? Don’t worry, in 30 minutes they’ll switch over to another type of event entirely, whether it’s on bobsleds or skis or skates or something else, even. 

You think curling is weird? There’s another event in which people ski from place to place, then take time to pull a gun off their back and shoot at targets, then ski to the next set of targets. 

Seriously, how do Americans not win this event every single time? 

There’s already been drama and spectacle in this year’s games. The Americans won the team figure skating with some fancy blade work, while Lindsey Vonn’s comeback story after a previous injury ended in tears after she crashed on the mountainside and had to be airlifted out into surgery. 

A different American, Breezy Johnson, won the skiing gold instead, and the Olympics moved on to the next event. I can figure out what to do until football returns eventually. 

For now, I’ve got another few days of the Olympics to go.

Stephen Milligan is the managing editor of The Walton Tribune, a sister publication of The Covington News. He can be reached at stephen.milligan@waltontribune.com.