Why is this man smiling?

The Sunday Column is back from its annual Holiday Hiatus. So everybody had better be on his best behavior.

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Dan Snyder is smiling so much these days that he reminds me of that guy on the Enzyte commercial (“the once-a-day tablet for natural male enhancement”).

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How improbable is Joe Gibbs’ return to the Redskins? Well, consider what he said in June when asked if “Steve Spurrier money” might get him to come out of retirement (as quoted by Sports Business Daily):

“Nope! They can have the $5million. Steve is going to earn every nickel of it. It’s a tough business. I think 30 years is enough. I kind of look at it and think: What else is there to do? At the point when I stepped out, there wasn’t a lot.”

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Five thoughts about Joe Gibbs that I never got into around to expressing last week:

1. People talk about how much the NFL has changed since he was last on the sideline (1992). But here’s one change that plays right into his hands: helmet radios. I mean, if you were a quarterback, is there anybody you’d rather have in your ear than Joe Gibbs? The man is a master at managing games and QBs, and helmet radios will only make him more effective.

2. As for his ability to deal with these newfangled zone blitzes … puh-leeze. The pass protection problems Gibbs faced in his first stint with the Redskins were every bit as challenging as the ones he’ll face now — if not more so. In the NFC East alone, remember, he had to contend with Randy White, Harvey Martin and Too Tall Jones in Dallas, Lawrence Taylor, Leonard Marshall and Jim Burt in New York and Reggie White, Clyde Simmons and Jerome Brown in Philadelphia. Nobody has defensive fronts like that nowadays (thanks to free agency). And yet, in ’91, their last Super Bowl year, the Redskins gave up a grand total of nine sacks. Somehow, I think Joe will come up with an answer to the zone blitz.

3. Perhaps his most overlooked statement at Thursday’s news conference was this: “Obviously, I work a lot with the offense, but having said that, I know that the heart of your team is special teams, and defense leads you to the playoffs. … I coached the offense because that’s where I felt like I could help the most, but I envision all of them being the same [in importance].”

Spurrier had trouble remembering his defensive players’ names (never mind special teams). What was worse, though, was that, because of his Florida experience, he figured he could just outscore his problems. If the defense was shakier because of the loss of two starting tackles, why, he’d just pitch it around and put up a couple more touchdowns. Gibbs knows better. You have to be solid in all phases of the game.

4. LaVar Arrington didn’t seem all that enthusiastic when ESPN (or whoever it was) interviewed him about Joe’s second coming. You had the feeling he was thinking: Unbelievable … I finally get away from that geezer Joe Paterno, and now the Redskins are bringing in this fossil.

5. I’m surprised the naysayers, the game-has-passed-him-by crowd, haven’t brought up this fact: Gibbs’ last five years with the Redskins (1988-92) were his worst five years. His teams posted a 55-32 record during that stretch (with two nonplayoff seasons and one winning Super Bowl appearance). In the seven years before that, the Redskins went 85-33 (with two non-playoff seasons and three Super Bowl appearances, two of them victorious). You could make the argument that opponents were beginning to catch onto Joe when he called it quits a dozen years ago. You could, but I won’t. The way I saw it, his players weren’t quite as good, that’s all.

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When I heard Gibbs utter the word “Fatback” at his news conference, I thought he might have invented a new position. But, no, he was just referring to a member of his NASCAR crew, Michael “Fatback” McSwain.

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Come to think of it, Warren Sapp would make a pretty good fatback.

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Speaking of comebacks, whoever thought we’d see Mike Sellers in a Redskins uniform again? After he went to the Browns as a free agent in 2001, he seriously badmouthed the Washington organization — from Dan Snyder on down. Snyder, he said, had created a working environment at Redskin Park that “wasn’t a happy atmosphere. You hear about him firing like 100 people since he took over. Who else is going to be next? You’re always worried about what’s going to happen.”

Sellers saved his best shots, though, for then-coach Marty Schottenheimer. “[The players] basically hate him,” he said. “They can’t even go to the restroom. They have alarms on their [training camp] doors. I’m glad I left.”

And now, amazingly, Sellers has returned, signing a one-year deal last week. He spent the past two seasons with the CFL’s Winnipeg Blue Bombers (after a drug charge, later dropped, finished him in Cleveland), and last year had 427 yards rushing, 481 receiving and nine touchdowns. There aren’t many 6-foot-3, 270-pound fullbacks around. Maybe Joe Gibbs can use him as an H-back.

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Or a fatback.

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If Nebraska’s search for a football coach had gone on much longer, Ron Vanderlinden might have wound up with the job.

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Quote of the Week: “I’m pretty well ashamed of this, but I only read the sports pages.” — Jack Nicholson in the January issue of Esquire

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Another observation of Jack’s in the magazine: “I think the Greeks invented sports as an antidote to philosophy. In sports there are absolute rules. It’s not, ’What about this? What about that?’ Either you’re safe or you’re out. It’s 10 yards or not. It’s in the hoop or out of the hoop. It’s certain.”

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Of course, what would Jack know about the Greeks? He only reads the sports pages.

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He could probably tell you more about Al Del Greco than he could about the Greeks.

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This month’s Esquire, by the way, is definitely worth the price of admission ($3). It’s got great stuff not just from Jack but from George Foreman, Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier — not to mention Christie Brinkley, who was a photographer at the famous “no mas” fight between Sugar Ray Leonard and Roberto Duran in 1980.

Christie insists she was “the first one to notice that Duran had a stomachache. I photographed them putting an ice pack on his stomach between rounds. … I’d watched the whole thing unfold. I was at the 8 o’clock weigh-in that morning, and Duran didn’t make it. I had pictures of the 12 o’clock weigh-in, when he did make it. And I knew what he was doing in those four hours: laxatives, steam room, all that stuff in order to make the weight. And you know, those laxatives don’t stop working just because the fight’s on. Here you’ve got a macho man in the ring … and that’s what happened. No mas! Get me to the bathroom!”

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GW’s Ed McKee e-mailed to say that Colonials hoops great Corky Devlin — resurrected in This Space recently because of his 0-for-15 shooting performance on Christmas Day 1956 for the Fort Wayne Pistons — is the subject of a book-in-progress. “[Its] titled ’In Search of Corky,’” McKee writes. “It’s ’the true story of a 1950s NBA player who found redemption at Gethsemani, Ky.’” The author is Paul Greenhalgh. We’ll keep an eye out for it.

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Given how well Jarvis Hayes has fared as a rookie, the Wizards should figure out a way to get his twin brother, Jonas, currently starring at Georgia. Phil Hopkins, who coached the pair at Western Carolina for a season — before they went on to bigger and better things — told the Asheville (N.C.) Citizen-Times, “They are two of the most wonderful people you’ll ever meet. As good as they are as players, they’re better as people.”

At last glance, Jonas was averaging 14.2 points for the Bulldogs and — get this — shooting 56.3 percent from the floor.

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In the ’60s and ’70s — my prime — the NBA had the Van Arsdale twins, Dick and Tom. Dick scored 15,079 career points, and Tom scored a nearly identical 14,232. But they didn’t get to play together in the pros until their final season in 1976-77, when they were teammates on the Suns. Here’s hoping it turns out differently for the Hayes brothers.

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And finally …

My friend Robert says, “Who’s next to come back to D.C., Dick Motta?”