Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh doesn’t have time for Penn State coach James Franklin’s “whining.”
That’s what Harbaugh said Monday during his first press conference since the Wolverines beat the Nittany Lions 41-17, a game that saw a halftime scuffle in the tunnel at Michigan Stadium.
Last week Franklin addressed the incident – in which a PB&J sandwich was allegedly hurled at a Michigan player – saying it’s “a problem” that the Big House only has one tunnel for both teams.
When asked about it on Monday, Harbaugh told reporters during his first media session since then that he has “bigger fish to fry than worry about that kind of whining,” and accused the PSU coach of being the “ringleader” in the incident.
"Really got bigger fish to fry than coach Franklin's opinion on the halftime tunnel from a game ago, but all you've got to do is walk into their locker room," Harbaugh said.
"I think you saw pretty clearly that they completely stopped. They weren't letting us get up the tunnel, and it just seemed like such a sophomoric ploy to try to keep us out of our locker room. And he looked like he was the ringleader of the whole thing,” he said. “But no, I’ve got bigger fish to fry than worry about that kind of whining."
Franklin said last week he would “prefer to talk about these things in the offseason,” but admitted he thinks the one-tunnel setup at Michigan is a problem and “has been.”
He suggested there needs to be some sort of policy in place to keep the teams separated in the tunnel.
“We're not the first team to kind of get into a jawing match in the tunnel. For me, I want to focus on getting my team into the locker room and not jawing back and forth,” Franklin said, according to Sports Illustrated’s Fan Nation.
He’s right. That’s not the first time there’s been a tunnel scuffle. And there’s a non-zero chance we see something similar during this weekend’s rivalry showdown when Michigan State visits.
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