You may not like his opinion here, but that's what it is. This is not the typical sourced article.
Again, it's kind of a strange thing for a beat reporter to be writing columns (especially at a place like the Trib. It's more common at smaller papers like the Herald). The worst part of this type of column is it opens him up for criticism. When he writes an unbiased article, people will point to this and claim, "See, Jay is biased because he called out Cougar fans."
This is why bigger papers normally don't have their beat reporters writing opinion columns. It's a protection for them.