Mike Sanford must win his final two games to return for a third season as Western Kentucky's head coach, according to a report from the Bowling Green Daily News.
Western Kentucky is 1-9 in Sanford's second season. The Hilltoppers close with a home game against UTEP and a road trip to Louisiana Tech. UTEP is 1-9 this season, while Louisiana Tech is 7-3.
It is not known what WKU AD Todd Stewart and university shareholders will do in the likely event Western Kentucky splits those two games.
Should Sanford return for 2019, he would be expected to make "a significant jump," according to the Daily News.
Sanford is 7-16 overall as WKU's head coach, but is just 2-14 in his last 16 games.
Western Kentucky hired Sanford, then Notre Dame's offensive coordinator, after Jeff Brohm was hired away to Purdue. Brohm went 22-5 with back-to-back Conference USA championships in his final two seasons at WKU.
WKU made Sanford, then 34, the youngest head coach in FBS at the time of his hiring. (He has since been surpassed in that department by Oklahoma's Lincoln Riley.)
If Western Kentucky does fire Sanford, he would be owed a $1.2 million buyout, to be paid over 18 months. The school has buyout money in reserves, according to the Daily News, after losing Brohm to Purdue, Bobby Petrino to Louisville and women's basketball coach Michelle Clark-Heard to Cincinnati, all of which totaled $2.35 million in buyout payments.
As always, stay tuned to The Scoop for the latest.