Could these second-year college football coaches get fired?

Forty names, games, teams and minutiae making news in college football (therapists standing by in Raleigh to assist North Carolina State fans in coping with the fourth-quarter flop against Wake Forest):

[More Dash: Bobby Petrino’s downfall | Tua/Top QBs | CFB’s hairy question]

THIRD QUARTER

IS YEAR 2 TOO SOON TO MAKE A MOVE?

There was a report from the Bowling Green Daily News on Monday that second-year Western Kentucky coach Mike Sanford (21) is coaching for his job over the final two games of the season. According to the Daily News, if Sanford loses to both 1-9 UTEP and 7-3 Louisiana Tech, he will be fired. If he wins both, he will be retained. If he splits the two games, it’s TBD.

Not too long ago, two years was halfway to the reasonable minimum amount of time a coach could expect before his job was in jeopardy. The four-year window became three across much of the sport more than a decade ago. Now it might be a two-year expiration date if things are going badly.

With that in mind, The Dash takes a look at second-year coaches to see where they stand. The answer appears to be that a lot of them are neither sinking nor swimming, just treading water:

Matt Rhule (22), Baylor. Current record: 5-5, 3-4 in the Big 12. Overall record at the school: 6-16. Conference record: 4-12. Trajectory: Up. Rhule inherited a post-nuclear program, with mass player transfers and a stain on the university’s reputation that imperiled recruiting. It would be very easy to see the program returning to Same Old Baylor competitive status, but Rhule’s second season has been a forward stride toward regaining relevance in the state of Texas. If the Bears can win one of their last two and be bowl-eligible with a young team, that would be a big stride forward. (His successor at Temple, Geoff Collins, also is doing solid work.)

Tom Allen (23), Indiana. Current record: 5-5, 2-5 in the Big Ten. Overall record at the school: 10-13. Conference record: 4-12. Trajectory: Steady-ish. Indiana football perpetually churns along on its little hamster wheel of sub-mediocrity, never really getting anywhere despite all the exertion. Staying ahead of the Rutgers-level Big Ten programs is attainable, but ascending to compete with the elite of the league’s East Division is asking an awful lot. Allen is no different from many of his predecessors, an inexpensive promotion from within who offers little promise of fundamentally shifting the program’s paradigm. He is a thematic fit with the school’s limited football aspirations.

P.J. Fleck (24), Minnesota. Current record: 5-5, 2-5 in the Big Ten. Overall record at the school: 10-12. Conference record: 4-12. Trajectory: Steady. If the Gophers lose their remaining two games — they’ll be underdogs against both Northwestern and Wisconsin — it will be their first consecutive seasons without a bowl bid since 2010-11. So in those terms, Fleck has not performed as well as his immediate predecessors, Jerry Kill and Tracy Claeys. But this year looked like a struggle from the beginning, when a program bereft of quarterback experience had to start a true freshman walk-on. There have been some high points — beating Fresno State, routing Purdue — that add credibility to the Head Boat Rower’s vision for the future. If Minnesota can steal a win and get to a bowl, that would certainly add more.

Justin Wilcox (25), California. Current record: 6-4, 3-4 in the Pac-12. Overall record at the school: 11-11. Conference record: 5-11. Trajectory: Up. The Bears have six wins for only the second time since 2011, and are coming off their first victory over USC since 2003. If the Golden Bears can close the season by beating rival Stanford for the first time since 2009, and then beat Colorado, they’d really have something to get excited about. Wilcox is cobbling it together at the quarterback position and relying on defense thus far; we’ll see if he can recruit his way to a more balanced team.

Matt Luke (26), Mississippi. Current record: 5-5, 1-5 in the Southeastern Conference. Overall record at the school: 11-11. Conference record: 4-10. Trajectory: Steady. No, Luke has not won like the Rebels did in 2014-15, but there were some postseason ban-worthy reasons for Ole Miss’ success at that time. Luke has at least held the program together through the post-Hugh Freeze fallout, despite a bunch of transfers and NCAA sanctions. He’s got to figure out a way to improve the so-called Landshark defense, which actually has fared about as well as sharks would on dry land (Ole Miss has the worst defense in the SEC by a wide margin). As is so often the case, the vibe around the program will be heavily impacted by the result of the Egg Bowl on Thanksgiving night.

Luke Fickell (27), Cincinnati. Current record: 9-1, 5-1 in the American Athletic Conference. Overall record at the school: 13-9. Conference record: 7-7. Trajectory: Up. It took one season for Fickell to snap the Bearcats out of the Tommy Tuberville-era malaise. The year-over-year defensive improvement is crazy: from 31.8 points allowed to 14.9; from 429 yards allowed to 280. In fact, Cincinnati is an unlucky ending against Temple away from standing 10-0 heading into a showdown at Central Florida on Saturday. Fickell likely will be on the radar for some Power Five jobs in the coming weeks.

The previously mentioned Mike Sanford, Western Kentucky. Current record: 1-9, 0-6 in Conference USA. Overall record at the school: 7-16. Conference record: 4-10. This is a situation where the two-year window does not seem premature. Sanford has messed up a good thing about as fast as possible, inheriting a program coming off seasons of 12-2 and 11-3 and overseeing a collapse. Plenty of college football insiders were skeptical about hiring a 35-year-old off Notre Dame’s staff to replace Jeff Brohm, and that skepticism has proven prescient.

NOTRE DAME’S LONG HISTORY IN YANKEE STADIUM

The Notre Dame (28) playoff bid runs through Yankee Stadium on Saturday for a matchup with No. 13 Syracuse that ranks as the most important and intriguing game of the weekend. There hasn’t been a lot of college football played in the House That Ruth Built in recent decades, but it once was a focal point for the sport — and for the Fighting Irish.

Between 1925-46, Notre Dame played Army 20 times out of 22 meetings in Yankee Stadium. The Irish were as much a fall fixture in New York as the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, a significant element in building the national following of the program. And it just so happens that two of the most famous games in creating the Notre Dame mystique occurred in that fabled baseball park.

There was the Win One For The Gipper (29) game of 1928. Against Army, coach Knute Rockne delivered the most famous halftime speech in the history of football — one that became so celebrated that it virtually created the mythology of the coach as miraculous motivator. Rockne related to the Notre Dame players what he said was the dying wish of star running back George Gipp, delivered to him eight years earlier, shortly before he succumbed to strep throat and pneumonia.

“I’ve got to go, Rock,” Gipp supposedly told his coach. “It’s all right. I’m not afraid. Sometime, Rock, when the team is up against it, when things are wrong and the breaks are beating the boys – tell them to go in there with all they’ve got and win just one for the Gipper. I don’t know where I’ll be then, Rock. But I’ll know about it, and I’ll be happy.”

The game was scoreless at that point, and this was Rockne’s worst Notre Dame team. But the Irish pulled out a 12-6 upset of Army.

(Gipp, that game and that speech would later become a prime vehicle in elevating the profile of an actor named Ronald Reagan, who played Gipp in a 1940 movie. You may have heard of him.)

Then there was what might be the most celebrated tackle in school history (30). With undefeated Notre Dame playing undefeated Army On Nov. 9, 1946, in Yankee Stadium, the game was billed as the biggest in the annals of the sport.

The teams were locked in a scoreless tie in the second half when 1945 Heisman winner Doc Blanchard of Army took an old crossbuck handoff and broke away along the left sideline for what could have been the winning touchdown. But Irish two-way star Johnny Lujack, the last line of defense, cut down Blanchard to preserve the tie.

At 8-0-1, Notre Dame went on to win the AP national title and Army (9-0-1) finished No. 2, after winning the title the previous two years. Lujack would win the Heisman the following year, in 1947.

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