We’re All Getting Too Punchy Over This

The Piston-Pacer brawl not only had the NBA scrambling to do damage control, it sent Detroit Free Press reporters reaching for their calculators.

According to the newspaper, the nine players involved stand to lose a combined $12,498,156 in salary if they serve the full suspensions.

Meanwhile, Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times wondered about some different numbers, specifically just how the bruising encounter would be recorded.

He wrote, “NBA statisticians still aren’t sure whether the fight-shortened game goes into the record books as a 2-0 forfeit, as the 97-82 score when play was halted -- or 116-112, 115-113, with the third judge scoring it a 114-all draw.”

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Trivia time: Baseball’s newly named Nationals were preceded -- twice -- by the Senators in Washington, but who preceded soccer’s D.C. United in the nation’s capital?

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Just a wallflower: After the Raiders had lost, 23-17, to the Chargers on Sunday and dropped to 3-7, Ray Ratto of the San Francisco Chronicle came across a particularly forlorn figure in the Oakland gloom.

“Al Davis,” he wrote, “spent a good 20 minutes after the game leaning against a wall in the locker room staring at the unsightly mess before him with a look that said, ‘What I need right about now is for the ceiling to collapse.’ ”

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How ‘bout that? The New York State Athletic Commission has yanked Evander Holyfield’s boxing license, prompting Bud Geracie of the San Jose Mercury News to make a seemingly safe prediction.

“Holyfield said he will fight the ruling,” Geracie wrote. “He’ll lose that one too.”

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Goal-den anniversary? When defender Eric Abidel scored for Olympique Lyonnais in a recent French league soccer match, it was his first goal in five seasons.

Were his parents pleased? Maybe, maybe not.

“They have been together for 35 years and promised they would marry, once I scored my first professional goal,” said Abidel, 25. “I’m sure my father will now get started with the papers.”

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Tomorrow, the world: Among those watching Kurt Busch win his first NASCAR championship Sunday at Homestead, Fla., was seven-time champion Richard Petty, who appeared more interested in the crowd than the winner.

“We’ve got about 300 million people in the United States,” he told Dan Le Batard of the Miami Herald. “Only 50 [million] to 75 million are race fans. We’ve got a long way to go. Gotta keep going until we get all of them.”

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Trivia answer: The Washington Diplomats, and before that the Washington Whips.

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And finally: A retiring Lou Holtz worried Monday that his reputation would be damaged by his last game, a 29-7 loss by his South Carolina team to Clemson, a defeat made worse by an ugly brawl.

“Isn’t it a heck of a note, Lou Holtz is going to be remembered along with Woody Hayes for having a fight at the Clemson game,” Holtz said.

Hayes’ career ended after he punched Clemson linebacker Charlie Bauman during the Gator Bowl game in 1978.