Sportswriter loses bet, picks up $2,100 dinner tab for billionaire and his wife.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics states that the median salary for an average newspaper reporter in the United States is $36,360. A reporter's average salary usually maxes out at roughly $81,580--and that's not for any old reporter. That's for a Scoops McGee type person, someone with the fifty years' weight of misery, shame, and newspaper ink holding them down. Cigars, high-waist khakis, and a pocket full of back alley sources are their M.O. And Scoops still has to own a 15-year old, 250,000 mile Chevy Impala on his salary.

Tim Kawakami is one such writer. He works at the San Jose Mercury News covering sports, and recently recounted on a podcast how he made a joking bet that the San Francisco 49ers' billionaire owner Jed York wouldn't have the team's new stadium built by a random 2014 deadline. A chuckly ha-ha was had by all.

Except the stadium was built by 2014. Except Kawakami still agreed to buy dinner. Except York wanted that dinner. Except York was bringing his wife along, too. Except everyone agreed to go to The French Laundry for the dinner.

[[[pause]]]

If you don't know, The French Laundry makes for a once-in-a-lifetime dining experience. It is also like pouring kerosene on your life's savings and smoking feverishly around the fumes. Reading the wine list alone will take the rest of your afternoon to cover. Looking for that casual $50,000 bottle of wine? It's there, my friend. "Screaming Eagle Vineyards." Hotkey search that. Then double-check your credit limit.

[[[end pause]]]

The problem Kawakami had with the whole situation wasn't that he paid off the non-binding bet, but that York didn't seem to register the impact of such a meal on a measly sportswriter income, at The French Laundry no less. As Kawakami recounts:

"If I thought Jed [York] was sticking it to me, I’d almost be okay with it. I don’t even think he knew. I don’t think he knew what $2,100 means to a sportswriter who didn’t inherit a billion-dollar team."

That's right. The 36-year old York is a billionaire because grandpa was one, and such stacks of cash get passed down two generations. And, as I told you, check that wine list out. It's $310 a person for food The French Laundry. Three people = $930. (Service is included.) York cranked out another $1,200 on Kawakami through drink, but was oblivious.

Maybe York was oblivious that there was a $50,000 bottle available on hand. Things could have snowballed so much more rapidly.

NFL wide receiver has a punctuation first.

An umlaut!

You know what an umlaut is probably, and it's not that little fleshy thing hanging at the back of your throat. That's a uvula. Common mistake.

An umlaut is the punctuation mark of two dots above a letter found in many European languages, like German. It's sort of like if a letter had its own uvula, you might say.

Which brings us to German footballer Moritz Böhringer, who was just drafted by the NFL's Minnesota Vikings. The young rookie assumed he would have to spell his last name as Boehringer because the league's strict uniform policy forbids non-English punctuation. Even his Twitter handle can't manage an umlaut.

Except, for reasons unknown, the NFL changed their position.

Böhringer, not Boehringer.@MoBoehringer received approval from the @NFL to add the umlaut on his jersey. pic.twitter.com/w5oefFZZtT

— Minnesota Vikings (@Vikings) May 11, 2016

First Poland, now football jerseys. Germany never quits invading.

NFL offensive lineman going for his PhD in mathematics at MIT.

If this doesn't remind you of those six seasons Albert Einstein played linebacker for the Philadelphia Eagles, nothing will.

Starting my PhD in math at MIT this offseason!!! pic.twitter.com/vjcSctVx9i

— John Urschel (@JohnCUrschel) January 26, 2016

In other news, Johnny Manziel is one Jägermeister-fueled bad night away from a career at Safeway. We all have paths in life.

Super Bowl to take a one year hiatus using letters, does away with "L."

The Phoenicians called it lamedh. The Greeks call it lambda. The Latins--and the alphabet we use today--just call it L.

The National Football League? They're calling it quits, at least for one year when counting Super Bowls with Roman numerals (or, rather, letters), all because the Roman numeral for 50, when standing alone, doesn't look terribly appealing, so say the NFL's creative minds.

Jaime Weston, the NFL's vice president of brand and creative, told ESPN the thought process behind ditching the nearly half-century tradition of using letters. “When we developed the Super Bowl XL logo, that was the first time we looked at the letter L. Up until that point, we had only worked with X’s, V’s and I’s. And, at that moment, that’s when we started to wonder: What will happen when we get to 50?”

What will happen is a golden-hued numeric 50 that looks like it was stolen from the set of The Price Is Right.

"We think what we have makes a very powerful statement for the NFL brand," Weston told ESPN.

Powerfully generic and geriatric, yes.