A little context on the guy who wrote the article. He's a St. Louis native who went to Mizzou and just came back to the area to work for the paper to replace Bernie Miklasz as a columnist. There's probably a mix of homerism and pandering to the audience to get them on his side since he's so new. Now, that's certainly no excuse for terrible journalism, but I get why he wrote that the way he did. He's a pretty terrible homer in general from what I've heard of him on the radio here and there.