I am about to beat a dead horse. Not really, more like performing the last rites before the horse can finally be put to rest.  I’m talking about the recent firing of wrestling head coach Carter Jordan, There have been mixed opinions; however I, for one, didn’t feel very comfortable with the way the whole process was conducted. N.C. State has a long proud history in wrestling. Former head coach Bob Guzzo led the Wolfpack for over 30 years, amassing close to 350 victories. Guzzo’s wards helped him secure 15 ACC tournaments and/or championships and four national top-10 finishes, not to mention 84 individual ACC championships and four individual national champions. That’s a record you come across probably just once in a program’s history. Where Guzzo’s story ended, Jordan’s began. Jordan first came to State in 1997 as an administrative assistant and joined Guzzo’s staff full-time in 1998.  He was appointed associate head coach in 2002 and finally took over the reins of the program in 2004 after Guzzo’s retirement. Since then, Jordan’s resume includes one ACC championship, 13 individual ACC champions, two national top-25 finishes and a national champion in 2009 in the form of Darrion Caldwell. Not too shabby for a school where wrestling has not been one of the talked-about or cared-about sports.  Not only that, Jordan has twice been appointed the assistant head coach for the USA national wrestling team. Why would anyone want to fire such a guy? What defines success?  Agreed. The wrestling team hasn’t had the best last couple of seasons, but one has to wonder how someone who won the ACC Championship in 2007 by the widest margin in 13 years could turn into such a bad coach in a couple of years. Wrestling is one of the most physical sports there is today. With wrestlers highly prone to injury, the number of injuries Jordan has had to deal with has gone unnoticed. Yet Jordan refused to back down. He recruited well and had a consensus top-10 recruiting class this past year. Despite fielding a team with just three seniors in the season gone by, Jordan took the program in the right direction by qualifying five wrestlers to the NCAA Tournament. One of them went on to become an All-American this year; a huge improvement for a team that had been decimated by injuries a couple of years ago.  If a program is heading in the right direction it should be supported, not have its most important component, the head coach, fired. But then, that’s just my opinion.  What bothered me the most was how the Athletics Department handled the whole situation. “Carter Jordan will not return as head coach of the Wolfpack wrestling program in 2012-13.  Jordan served in the position for the past eight seasons.” Along with his record, this was all the Athletics Department decided to say in a press release. State students paid $576 dollars as part of their fees towards the Athletics department in the last calendar year. And that’s all they get? A two-line statement about the firing of one of the most respected and successful coaches the Wolfpack has had?  I strongly feel the Athletics Department owes students a better and more rounded explanation about any decision it decides to make. Agreed, the department is the apple of the eye for everyone of us, following the return of the men’s basketball team to the Sweet 16, and probably criticizing them at this point will draw me more rebuff than anything else, but I feel it’s my duty as a journalist to shed light on matters most of us will tend to overlook.   The way athletics director Debbie Yow has conducted herself by firing two coaches in two years says a lot about the ambition she has and how much she wants to take the Pack to the next level. However, Dr. Yow should take into consideration that every decision she makes has a ripple effect on the thousands of members of the Wolfpack community and that a little more transparency, a little more explanation behind the choices her department decides to make would lead to more trust and belief in the whole organization.  This also rings warning bells for women’s soccer, a program that has underachieved in the past few years, notably failing to even make the ACC Championships in the last five years.  Coach Jordan is probably one of the best people I have interviewed and also one of the nicest people I have come across in this business, and I am sure he will prove to be an asset wherever he decides to go next.