Following Michigan’s 28 to 10 win over Purdue on Sept. 23, Wolverines head coach Jim Harbaugh spoke out about his experience with Big Ten football hospitality.

“We would fully support a conversation-wide set of guidelines for visiting football team accommodations, because we have experienced less-than-ideal conditions on the road,” Harbaugh said.

His biggest concerns were the lack of air-conditioning in the locker room and the inability to X-ray his players on-site. This created an atmosphere with unbearable heat and danger that Harbaugh thought was a part of some strategy Purdue was creating to get a leg up on the competition.

“It seems like a conscious effort to gamesmanship, get an advantage over the opponent,” Harbaugh said.

He finished his presser by explaining how Michigan will make the first step in the direction of Big Ten hospitality. This would hopefully change the culture back to a once forgotten “leave it all on the field” ideal.

“Make this a priority,” Harbaugh said, “Make sure if you have guests, you have visitors coming in, their health, their safety needs are being addressed.”

‘Real season’ starts for Illinois

Coming off Illinois’ bye week, head coach

Lovie Smith is itching for another game. And for good reason — the last time Illinois took the field was on Sept. 15 against South Florida. In this nonconference outing, the Fighting Illini lost 47-23.

“Excited to get back on the football field,” Smith said. “Excited to play on in front of a national TV audience again.”

Lovie acknowledged that his team’s real season starts on Friday versus Nebraska, when the Illini Big Ten schedule begins.

“It’s about Big Ten play for us,” Smith said.

This meant losing against South Florida was a rather large letdown for the organization, seeing as the Big Ten schedule will ramp up slowly over the year until having to face Wisconsin and Ohio State later, both ranked teams.

“Of course the goal was to win all three of our first games,” Smith said. “Now we need to see how we come back from a big loss.”

Room for improvement at Ohio State

Coming into the season, Urban Meyer had expectations for units on his team. He believed his pass defense would close better on opposing wide receivers, and thought the unit would just be more put together at this point in the year.

“This year, because of, once again, our friends leave early for the NFL Draft,” Ohio State’s head coach said. “You get guys in the back end of our defense that you just don’t know.”

Maybe because of young players in the secondary or maybe because of a combination of factors, Ohio State is ranked No. 80 in the country when it comes to pass defense. The Buckeyes allow 228.3 passing yards a game. For a team that is ranked No. 11, that needs to improve.

“I thought our corner development would be a little bit further ahead, but they are making strides,” Meyer said.

He does believe his offense, however, is living up to its preseason expectations.

“Other than obviously the biggest game we played this year, I thought offensively we made great strides throughout, but other than that game,” Meyer said.