ANN ARBOR -- Nearly four years ago, Brady Hoke claimed he would've "walked" to his dream job.

Slowly but surely over the course of his tenure, that dream turned into a nightmare.

One that is now officially over.

Michigan interim athletic director Jim Hackett fired Hoke on Tuesday, per reports from Scout.com's Sam Webb and FoxSports.com's Bruce Feldman. Hoke delivered the news to his team at a 3 p.m. meeting inside Schembechler Hall.

Michigan officials announced that Hackett will hold a media availability at 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday to "discuss the state of the football program under the direction of head coach Brady Hoke."

And now, after going through just three head coaches in a 38-year span (1969-2007), Michigan will be looking for its third coach in the past seven years.

Where does Michigan turn from here? As was the case in 2011, the same year Hoke was hired, former Michigan quarterback -- and current San Francisco 49ers head coach -- Jim Harbaugh sits atop most fan wish lists. Harbaugh's future in San Francisco is reportedly shaky, and he may well be coaching somewhere else next season.

But does he want to return to college? ESPN's Adam Schefter reports that, odds are, he doesn't. However, it'll now be Hackett and company's job to find out just how true that is.

The other obvious standby, again, is LSU coach Les Miles. The 61-year-old Miles -- a former Bo Schembechler player and Michigan assistant -- is 103-28 in 10 years at LSU.

From there, hot names in the coaching world at the moment include Mississippi State's Dan Mullen, TCU's Gary Patterson, former Rutgers and Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach Greg Schiano, Tennessee's Butch Jones and many more.

As for Hoke himself, his final season in Ann Arbor, a disaster both on and off the field, continued a steady decline in record in each of his four years on campus. And after starting his career with a remarkable 11-2 record and a Sugar Bowl win to close the 2011 season, Hoke's Michigan tenure bottomed out with a 42-28 loss at Ohio State, a 5-7 record and a broken team from top to bottom in 2014.

Hoke -- who went 7-13 over his final 20 games -- will, per his contract, receive $3 million to buy out the final two years of his original 6-year deal, signed in 2011. He finishes his tenure with an overall record of 31-20, 18-14 in Big Ten play.

Under Hoke, Michigan went 1-3 against Michigan State, 1-3 against Ohio State and 2-2 against Notre Dame. In those rivalry games on the road, Michigan was 0-7. Against ranked opponents, Hoke was 3-10. His teams also were 7-13 in true road games.

After former athletic director Dave Brandon fired Rich Rodriguez following the 2011 season, he formally announced Hoke as the program's new head coach on Jan. 11, 2011. Brandon claimed at the time that popular candidates Harbaugh and Miles were never offered, and Hoke -- a defensive line coach on Michigan's 1997 national title team -- brought a 47-50 career record to Ann Arbor.

He immediately exceeded expectations during his first season, fixing Rodriguez's broken defense along with new defensive coordinator Greg Mattison, and guiding the Wolverines to a Sugar Bowl win and 11-2 record. He talked about smash-mouth football, valued the Big Ten championship over everything and bought support from Michigan fans by appearing versed in every tradition the school and football program held near and dear.

Unfortunately for Hoke, though, the goodwill started to crumble.

He followed up his impressive first season with a disappointing 2012. After getting off to a 2-2 start, Hoke's team gathered some steam by fighting through an injury to Denard Robinson to win six of its next seven games, but bottomed out in the end with a loss at Ohio State and a loss to South Carolina in the Outback Bowl, finishing 8-5.

The wheels began to fall off a year later, as Michigan nearly blew early season games against Akron and Connecticut before collapsing in a four-overtime clunker at Penn State. Michigan would beat Indiana the following week, but then lose five of six to close the season at 7-6. After one of the worst rushing performances in the modern era (Michigan averages just 125.7 rushing yards per game), Hoke fired offensive coordinator Al Borges, and hired ex-Alabama play-caller Doug Nussmeier.

Hoke's final offseason got off to a rocky start at the end of January, when news broke that former kicker Brendan Gibbons was expelled from school in December for violating the school's sexual misconduct policy. Gibbons was not present with the club for its bowl game in late December, and Hoke attributed the absence to a "family matter." Left tackle Taylor Lewan also played in the bowl game, despite getting into an altercation outside an Ann Arbor bar in December that eventually led to a pair of misdemeanor guilty pleas.

Starting offensive lineman Graham Glasgow was arrested for drunken driving in March, and wide receiver Csont'e York was thrown off the team in August after punching a man outside an Ann Arbor bar in July. York eventually spent seven days in jail.

The 2014 season itself provided no relief, as the Wolverines get off to a 2-4 start and Hoke, Brandon and the entire football program became the focal point of a national controversy after sophomore quarterback Shane Morris was kept in the game after suffering a concussion.

The public relations disaster that ensued put more pressure on Brandon, who eventually resigned on Oct. 31, and seemed to also intensify the heat under Hoke's chair. Michigan's offense eventually bottomed out, as Nussmeier's system produced just eight touchdown passes through the the first 11 games of the season.

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