AIR FORCE ACADEMY — If magic has an expiration date, is time up for Troy Calhoun?

For the first time in his 18 magical seasons with the Air Force Falcons, Calhoun appeared Saturday like a football coach searching for answers without any clues.

After his team was trounced 34-7 by Navy and embarrassed in front of the first sellout crowd at Falcon Stadium in 13 years, I asked Calhoun:

Is this the biggest challenge he has faced since taking over a storied program in 2007?

“Absolutely, it is,” Calhoun replied.

The challenge confronting Calhoun smells like big trouble.

The Falcons’ record not only dropped to 1-4, it feels as if there could be more pain to endure before hitting rock bottom.

While seven games remain on the schedule, Air Force might not be favored more than once through season’s end.

Here’s what makes this crucial moment in Calhoun’s tenure at AFA so tough for the undermanned and inexperienced Falcons, who not only wilted against an archrival in the October heat, but looked totally inept offensively and often poorly coached in the process:

“You’re just getting guys in there that really their eyes are really wide open when it comes to playing college football,” Calhoun said.

Only once in the history of this rivalry have the Falcons been beaten worse at home field by Navy, and that 29-point setback was way back in 1978, when even a coach as brilliant as Bill Parcells couldn’t figure out how to matriculate the ball down the field at Air Force.

On a morning when CBS focused its cameras on service academy football, all 39,441 fans had yet to escape the gridlocked access road to the stadium before Navy had already built what proved to be an insurmountable 14-0 lead.

“It stinks. I can say it hurts,” said Falcons receiver Tre Roberson.

It’s pain that won’t be easily forgotten.

Roberson is a junior who had not previously felt the burn of a loss to Navy, compounded by the anguish of being stuck alongside dejected AFA teammates, as they were forced to stand solemnly on the field after the game, listening to the Midshipmen sing their school song with pride.

“I hope we take this loss and actually think about what happened,” said Roberson, who scored AFA’s lone touchdown by hauling in a 45-yard pass in the second quarter. “Take what we can from this game, understand the history and everything around this game, then go on and try to do something the rest of this season.”

What’s so puzzling, not to mention infuriating, is not so long ago, the Falcons were flying high.

On the first Saturday of last November, they traveled to Denver for a showcase in Empower Field at Mile High, carrying with them a sterling 8-0 record, the No. 17 ranking in the country and dreams of playing in a New Year’s Day bowl.

Then Air Force fell apart, getting dominated 23-3 by an Army team that came to Colorado as 18-point underdogs.

The Falcons have never recovered. The sound of their bubble bursting was deafening. That massacre at Mile High has pushed Air Force into a 2-8 downward spiral.

A robust rushing game, long the program’s bread and butter, has gone stale. The Falcons ran for a pedestrian 158 yards against Navy.

They are averaging a pathetic 11.4 points per game, a statistic artificially inflated by three touchdowns against a cupcake named Merrimack in the opener.

“It’s hard to win when you only score seven points,” Calhoun said.

We all know a trademark of a Calhoun team is it never beats itself. But a frustrated head coach was forced to bench starting quarterback John Busha early, after he threw an interception into double coverage.

Needing a fourth-down stop in the first quarter, an undisciplined Air Force defense failed to seal the edge, allowing Navy receiver Nathan Kent to take a reverse and romp 34 yards to the end zone.

Get the picture? What plagued the Falcons was execution so bad it reeked of poor coaching.

Searching for any bright spot in a miserable performance, Calhoun said: “I do think we punted the ball adequately.”

Maybe it’s time to punt this Air Force season and chalk it up as a harsh learning experience.

Way back in 2013, Calhoun and the Falcons suffered through a 2-10 record, then rebounded to 10 victories a scant 12 months later.

The landscape of college football has changed so dramatically with the transfer portal and NIL, however, that everything that happened a decade ago now seems like ancient history, if not downright irrelevant.

Calhoun now finds himself staring in the mirror at a 58-year-old coach that must teach himself new magic tricks.