Were this weekend’s NFL divisional playoff games entertaining, in the most generic sense of the word?

Absolutely, whether or not you had a particular rooting interest. The Wall Street Journal’s Jason Gay writes that it’s hard to beat the NFL’s entertainment value, despite that many problems plaguing the league and the sport and that will continue to trouble them both.

But if you did have a team involved — raising my hand here — then you understand that these matters were about much more than entertainment. A final, inexplicable, moment of joy, aborting what figured to be a long, gloomy winter, could never, ever be scripted the way it turned out, no matter how much time the Falcons and Seahawks spent practicing just such a scenario.

Nick Hornby years ago delved deep into the fan’s soul to illustrate, as well as any writer ever has, why for so many this can never be mere entertainment:

One thing I know about a fan is this: it is not a vicarious pleasure, despite all appearances to the contrary . . . But when there is some kind of triumph, the pleasure does not radiate from the players outwards until it reaches the likes of us as the back of the terraces in a pale and diminished form; our fun is not in a watery version of the team’s fun . . .

The joy we feel on occasions like this is not a celebration of others’ good fortune, but a celebration of our own; and when there is a disastrous defeat the sorrow that engulfs us is, in effect, self-pity, and anyone who wishes to understand how football is to be consumed must realise this above all things.

Hours after Tony Gonzalez admitted that “I was on the ground crying, like a little baby,” one of many celebrity award shows was underway, summoning all kinds of social media snark, sass and empty banter that is no stranger to conversation about sports, except for this important point: Nobody was really commenting on how the TV programs, or movies, affected them.

But there was plenty of commentary about the dresses and fashions and hairstyles of the stars and Jodie Foster’s coming-out speech.

Was “Argo” a terrific movie? Certainly, to those who had seen it and raved about it. Was Daniel Day-Lewis superb in “Lincoln?” I think so, but it’s first film I’ve seen in the theatre in some time.

But there weren’t the disquisitions about why these excelled as movies, or as individual performances, since the context wasn’t about examining them as pieces of cinematic art.

In moments like these, I turn, as I usually do, to the early pages of “The Joy of Sports,” where many years ago, as the sports television age was rounding into the dominant position it continues to hold, Michael Novak offered the ultimate rejoinder of resistance.

Novak was taking aim at a 1960s-influenced generation of sports journalists who looked at their subjects through the prism of politics and social issues, instead of only sports, and tried to trivialize them as a result.

I have referred to some of these passages before but they are essential to the approach I’m taking with this blog, and they perfectly sum up a game that still has me trembling with emotion like few ever have in my many years of watching all kinds of sports:

The motive for regarding sports as entertainment is to take the magic, mystification, and falsehood out of sports.

Sports are far more serious than the dramatic arts, much closer to primal symbols, metaphors, and acts, much more ancient and more frightening.

Those who think that sports are merely entertainment have been bemused by an entertainment culture. . . I don’t watch football to pass the time. The outcome of the game affects me. I care. Afterward, the emotion I have lived through continues to affect me. Football is not entertainment. It is far more important than that.

When I created Extracurriculars two years ago, I set out to explore away-from-the-field matters in sports.

Since that’s just as expansive a category as the games, I realized I was risking becoming too broad and unfocused. And for a while, it did seem that way.

In the last year or so, I’ve devoted much of the space here to women’s sports as I prepared my e-book, “Beyond Title IX,” which was published in June.

While blogs are testaments to the power of a niche, this blog’s niche was meant to be a bit more wide-ranging.

My fresh emphasis on non-playing topics comes via sports books and history, documentaries, reviews, arts and culture.

I won’t be delving much into sports business and sports media, subjects with many excellent blogs and websites devoted to them. Too many, I think.

They also don’t fit into the approach I’m taking, and it is an experimental one, which includes exploring the connection between sports and the imaginative arts, twins of a singular creative impulse.

It sounds like a difficult connection to make, and I’ll likely stumble around a lot along the way. But my best childhood memories and experiences derive from a blending of these two worlds.

I grew up in an Atlanta suburban home within walking distance of a public park and a public library. When I wasn’t playing softball or tennis, or swimming, I was at the library, browsing and checking out books.

These activities sparked the passions for sports and reading and writing that still make me feel like a kid as I settle into middle age. I don’t think of them as separate spheres, despite our contemporary, media-imposed divide.

My thoughts about this also stem from a passage in Michael Novak’s excellent book, “The Joy of Sports,” that has been a massive influence on me:

“I cannot forever split my life into two, half in love with sports, half in love with serious thought. Life seeks unity.”

Novak was on to something that has gotten lost since he first expressed those sentiments in the late 1970s, as big-time sports have become hopelessly corporate, bloated and disposable, relentless spectacles for passive entertainment consumption.

I also was reminded of the connection between sports and the larger, broader culture — and not just pop culture — when I read, right before the London Games began, about the Olympic medals given for art between 1912 and 1952. The Cultural Olympiad that exists today was created because then-IOC dictator Avery Brundage couldn’t tolerate professional artists being rewarded in what was to be a purely amateur endeavor. (h/t for this link from @agirlasmoke)

With our popular sports world now so dominated by commercial imperatives, and with the jaded media landscape wallowing in celebrity, scandal and 24/7 publishing schedules, I want to take a few steps back — as well as a few deep breaths — and get back to why we’re drawn to sports in the first place. And why many of us can’t live without them.

The answers aren’t to be found in the distraction of constant Tweeting (guilty as charged!), sounding off on talk radio or speculating on which pro athlete a Kardashian sister will target next. What a very wise observer calls “sportz” has sadly become the media-contrived default for our sports experiences.

Real sports are far more elemental to authentic human culture than anything you’ll come across in “Booyah” culture, which Novak anticipated when he wrote:

“If sports were entertainment, why should we care?”