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CEDAR FALLS, Iowa -- The Northern Iowa baseball jersey hangs behind the door to Troy Dannen's office, a constant reminder of the eggshell-thin landing for a portion of college athletics.

The massive photographic mural of Ali Farokhmanesh hangs on the wall outside Ben Jacobson's office, a constant reminder of the power of college athletics.
Ben Jacobson had no interest in leaving and even less interest in doing the "hot coach flirting with bigger jobs" tango.

He wanted to re-up his contract with Northern Iowa and he wanted to get it done quickly and quietly.

And he wasn't looking to break the bank. At the start of last season, Jacobson was the seventh highest-paid coach in the 10-team Missouri Valley. He and his administrators agreed that if he could get closer to the middle of the league, everyone would be happy.

But coming up with the cash to essentially make Jacobson the highest-paid person on the UNI campus at a cash-strapped university wasn't going to be easy.

And then Farokhmanesh made the shot and the money magically appeared.

In the 72 hours between Northern Iowa's return from the first two rounds in Oklahoma City and its departure for the regional in St. Louis, Dannan raised $1.95 million to keep his coach.

Wealthy donors and benefactors who were previously on the fence about donating the cash willingly opened their wallets, including some who had never contributed to the athletics department before.

Consider: When Dannen came to UNI, he was facing an $800,000 budget deficit. Then the state appropriations reduced its contribution from $5 million to $3.6 million, with designs on getting it to zero.

When the team left for St. Louis and the Sweet 16 against Michigan St., Dannen was told he had to put together some sort of road map to get his department out of the red.

And then, during the week of March 22, credit card transactions spiked from a typical 29 percent to 44 percent at the UNI Foundation Call Center; 46 new members joined the Panther Scholarship Club one week after UNI beat Kansas; sales to the school's online store jumped a ridiculous 1,577 percent from February to March and website traffic soared as well, with a 168 percent increase in page views and a 268 percent increase in unique visitors over the previous month.

Those numbers are eye-poppers anywhere. At a school tucked in Cedar Falls, Iowa, those numbers are mind-blowing.

By The Numbers: The Impact
310,088: Unique visitors to UNI athletics site in March (avg: 80,000)
38,786: Visits to UNI site March 20 (avg: 15,000 on Saturdays)
24,306: Google searches for Northern Iowa March 20 (avg: 7,000 per week)
12,447: Google News stories referencing UNI from March 17-30 (632 from Jan. 16-Mar. 16)
1,577 percent: Increase in sales at online store
268 percent: Increase in unique visitors to UNI site in March
30 percent: Increase in calls to admissions office March 22

The fairy-tale ending here would be that the basketball team did enough to save the baseball team.

Sadly, that's not true.

By the time UNI divvies up its NCAA tournament money with its Valley brethren, even the bump in donations and purchases won't be enough to save baseball or return the athletics department entirely to the black.