On a day decorated in wistful nostalgia, the Dolphins on Sunday treated their fans to something else that stirred the memory, like a dear friend seldom seen and nearly forgotten who suddenly reappears: Good, old-fashioned dominance.

They inducted Super Bowl-era Dolphin Jim Mandich posthumously onto the stadium Honor Roll at halftime, and he’d have had plenty of occasion on a day like this to shout his signature phrase with giddy gusto.

“Awwright, Miami!”

Old coach Don Shula, 81, who spoke to the crowd about Mandich, uses a wheelchair at times these days because back issues prevent him from standing for long periods, the image another and rather startling reminder of how long it has been since Shula’s youth and this franchise’s good, old days were being lived, not recalled ever distantly.

Almost 40 years, it has been.

On Sunday, you could pretend those days were back.

For a change, you could listen to that familiar, old team fight song — Miami has the Dolphins, the greatest football team … — and it felt real, not mocking.

You could look at the scoreboard, at a 34-14 rout of the Oakland Raiders, and you could drink in the atmosphere of a buoyant crowd, and it let you remember how much fun Dolphins home games used to be.

Yeah, the reality is a 4-8 record overall, but the continuing surge since that 0-7 start has been reality, too, and a remarkable wonder at that.

Fun in the sun

The Dolphins are winning because they have rediscovered what seven consecutive defeats knocks out of a team and strips from a man:

That football is supposed to be fun.

So when linebacker Kevin Burnett returned that interception for a touchdown to make it 34-0, he disappeared in the end zone under a jostling, whooping mountain of white jerseys in a snapshot of exuberant camaraderie.

“We’re having fun again,” he would say later. “I can’t explain how much that takes away the pain.”

When moments later Reggie Bush endured a punishing hit, he immediately dropped onto his hands and tiptoes and started doing pushups right there near midfield. One, two, three, four …

The crowd roared its approval and within seconds bloomed the chant, “Reg-gie! Reg-gie!”

“I wanted to let him know his hit didn’t hurt me,” Bush would explain. “Just a little humor. Having fun out there …”

Afterward, in the locker room, for the first time all season, I swear I literally heard singing in the shower. Receiver Brian Hartline was trying to conduct an interview but somebody in a slightly off-key baritone was crooning, Do you like pina coladas …

Fun.

Four wins in the past five games are a Petri dish for that in this sport, and there isn’t a more stupefying turnaround in the NFL right now than what Miami is doing.

“Our swagger has changed,” veteran Jason Taylor tried to explain. “This team is a lot looser now and not playing uptight, not preparing uptight, not acting uptight, and that shows on Sundays.”

dangerous fins

At 0-7, outright gloom and the self-defeating “Suck For Luck” phenomenon were warring factions within the fandom.

Now, a 4-8 record masks one of the most dangerous teams in football, a team that has endured four losses by a combined eight points — a team that easily could be and probably should be 8-4 and thinking playoffs right now.