COLUMBUS – Buckeye head coach Urban Meyer and Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh agree on at least one thing: That visiting-team locker rooms in the Big Tern could stand some improvement.
Harbaugh ripped Purdue for its substandard facilities for visitors and wants the Big Ten to investigate. He’s calling for some standards for space, cleanliness and comfort for visitors.
Meyer agreed that poor locker rooms for visitors are a problem at some conference schools.
“I’ve shared it with our athletic director and the commissioner should handle that. This is not, all due respect, this is the Big Ten Conference,” he told reporters Monday. “In my strong opinion that should not be allowed.”
While defending their own facilities, Purdue officials said they “fully support a conversation regarding a conference-wide set of guidelines for visiting football team accommodations because we have experienced less-than-ideal conditions on the road,” according to a statement released Monday by Tom Schott, the university’s senior associate athletics director for communications.
Harbaugh specifically mentioned Purdue’s medical facilities, calling them unsanitary, and said the X-ray table looked like something “from the 1920s.”
“Basic x-ray is available within our athletic footprint and more-sophisticated capabilities are located two blocks away, similar to the arrangements at many other schools,” Schott responded.
“Our sports medicine staff members, in fact, have received numerous compliments from their Michigan counterparts regarding the care they received at Purdue,” he said.
The Buckeyes will be using the visitors’ locker rooms at High Point Solutions Stadium in Piscataway, N.J., Saturday when they travel to Rutgers to for their second Big Ten game of the season (7:30 p.m./BTN).