Jim Harbaugh slams James Franklin after recent comments, tunnel incident

Penn State and Michigan battled against one another in Ann Arbor in Week 7, and the game wasn’t without incident. At halftime, the two teams got into it and created a heated incident in the tunnel on the way to the two locker rooms.

After the game, Penn State head coach James Franklin had a plea for the Big Ten and urged the conference to make a change after the incident. He wants a policy in place that can help avoid situations like that.

On Monday, Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh addressed those comments from Franklin, and it’s safe to say he didn’t hold back what he really thought on the suggestion from the Penn State headman. Especially considering he thinks Franklin was right in the center of the incident altogether.

“Really got bigger fish to fry than Franklin’s opinion on the halftime tunnel from a game ago,” Harbaugh said. “All you got to do is walk into their locker room. Like 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 rooms.

“And he looked like he was the ringleader of the whole thing. I got bigger fish to fry than worry about that kind of whining.”

Harbaugh’s strong comments come after a strong suggestion from Franklin

In Michigan Stadium, there is one tunnel that both teams use to go to their respective locker rooms. In big-time games, emotions are sure to ride high on the field. When the teams head to the locker room, those frustrations and emotions can boil over while in such close proximity to their opponent.

That’s at least what Franklin thinks. And he wants a rule in place to combat it.

“I prefer to talk about these things in the offseason, but the one tunnel is a problem. It’s a problem and has been,” said Franklin. “And to me, we need to put a policy in place from a conference perspective. In my mind that’s gonna stop it. 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 in the locker room, not jawing back and forth.”

For Franklin, he wants his team to get back to the locker room to continue focusing on the task at hand. Jawing at the opponents does no good, and he wants to avoid that situation happening again at all costs.

“There really should be a policy that the first team that goes in, there’s a buffer,” Franklin said. “Because if not, they start jawing back and forth. And what’s going to happen is something bad is going to happen before we put it in the policy. All there’s gotta be is a two-minute or a minute buffer in between the two teams; that this team in before that team gets close and however we want to do it. But we’re not the first team that’s had issues like that. Under the current structure, we won’t be the last. And to me, there’s a really easy solution, but we gotta do it.”