“If we can get the governor and the Board of Trustees on our side, we may be able to stop this at the top. It will be difficult, but not impossible,” Heller wrote to friends this week.

The Board of Regents is scheduled to meet in Iowa City on March 18 and 19. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking on the baseball team’s campaign to raise $1.2 million by April 5 to save the program. Dannen extended that $1.2-million olive branch on Feb. 23 after announcing the program would be dropped due to budget cuts in the athletic department. If the Panthers can raise the money, they can save the program for three years. If they don’t, the 103-year-old program will vanish.

“It’s a pretty terrible feeling to know your school doesn’t want you,” Heller said in his letter.

The Support UNI Baseball campaign had raised $232,000 as of Friday morning. Heller is genuinely touched by the support, but it’s not nearly enough money. Perhaps there are some heavy hitters who are waiting to spring forward in the next three weeks, but Heller cannot count on it. That’s why he’s issued the call to contact the governor, board of regents, UNI president and UNI’s athletic director to let them know how strongly people feel about the program.

Iowa State dropped its varsity baseball program after the 2001 season, so that left the Panthers and Iowa Hawkeyes with the only NCAA Division I baseball programs in the state. If the Panthers disappear, there’d be only one D-I program in the entire state for all the thousands of high school players and young kids who love the game.

Northern Iowa always has a high percentage of Iowans on its roster, and this year is no different with 24 Iowans on the 37-man team. If UNI drops baseball, all 24 of those Iowans will have to find another club. Or stop playing.

Heller reported that UNI has a budget of $11.8 million for the entire athletic department this year. He said baseball gets only $389,000, an amount that was scheduled to drop to $338,000. Dannen anticipates a 9 percent cut in revenues from the school’s general fund for next year, which would strip $500,000 to $600,000 from his budget. Therefore, baseball had to go.

“That is simply not fair,” said Heller. “Baseball is willing to bear its fair share and raise private money to replace the loss of public money, but other sports should be asked to do likewise.”

It’s easy to contact the governor. If you’re sending a letter by snail-mail, send it to:

Office of Gov. Chet Culver
Attention Chet Culver
State Capitol
Des Moines, Iowa 50319

If you’d like to send an e-mail to the governor, go to http://www.governor.iowa.gov/administration/contact/ and an e-mail form will pop up. Just fill it in and send it.

You can reach David Miles, the president of the Board of Regents, at miles.david.w@gmail.com. The web address for the entire Board of Regents is http://www2.state.ia.us/regents/boardmembers/brdmembers.html.

The e-mail address for Ben Allen is president@uni.edu. And the e-mail address for Dannen is troy.dannen@uni.edu.

Keep your comments clean and keep them civil. But tell Culver, Miles, Allen and Dannen what you think.

It might help more than you can imagine.