Most of the country doesn't have a Microcenter near them. Typically a $99 CPU deal becomes a $99 + $85 MB + $99 DDR4 3200 = $283 + tax/shipping = ~$300. So the CPU is only about 1/3 of the total price assuming you already have a case/power supply/GPU. You don't normally want to cheap out on the MB or RAM that would cripple future upgrades.
And he is not referring to the FS/FT deal either but, brand new buy in store deals. And in fact, I could get a really good deal at Microcenter with this processor, an X370 Pro and ram for about $160. (When the board was in stock, anyways.)