Chris Bickell is helping to keep Pitt athletics in the game.

For starters, there’s the matter of the $20 million — the largest single donation provided to Pitt athletics — he donated in 2021. To put that into perspective, John and Gertrude Petersen of Erie donated $10 million in 1999 to help launch a new era of athletics with the construction of Petersen Events Center.

Half of Bickell’s donation will go toward enhancements for training, weight training and nutrition, among other initiatives, for the football program. The remainder will be placed in an endowment, according to the university.

Then there is the matter of Alliance 412, a collective of supporters unaffiliated with the university who pool their resources to facilitate name, image and likeness (NIL) opportunities for Pitt athletes. Bickell founded the group.

“When I made that donation, that was years in the making. That wasn’t on a whim,” said Bickell, CEO of WellHive, a company in Melbourne, Fla., that provides technological support and upgrades for veterans health care. “I love (Pitt). I love what it stands for. It made me a man.

“Getting the alumni, really us, behind these (football) guys, that’s what’s necessary. You go around any business that’s successful, you have to have financial backing.”

Bickell came to Pitt in the mid-1990s, graduating in 1997, despite a family history at Penn State.

“My dad (Robert, a writer for Time Magazine) had gone to Penn State through the years when Pitt and Penn State were big rivals,” he said. “I wanted something different, and I didn’t know it.

“When I walked around campus, it was a no-brainer. When I saw the Cathedral (of Learning), I never saw that in my life. (I was) blown away as everyone is.”

Bickell founded and served as partner of Liberty IT Solutions until the company was acquired by Booz Allen Hamilton in 2021.

His worth has been estimated at between $50 million and $55 million.

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To recognize Bickell’s gift, the head football coaching position at Pitt is named the “Chris Bickell ’97 Head Football Coach.” It’s the first named coaching position in Pitt history.

The donation aside, Bickell’s work with Alliance 412 could be a readily noticeable game-changer.

Two years ago, the NCAA adopted an NIL policy that allowed athletes to be paid for their name, image and likeness. That came on the heels of a court case in which the NCAA was sued in 2021 by former West Virginia running back Shawne Alston.

Months earlier, the NCAA updated its transfer rules to allow athletes to move on to another school without having to redshirt — or sit out one season — if it’s their first time doing so. Previously, athletes were required to sit out one year.

The mix of less restrictive transfer rules and the ability for athletes to get paid for their name, image and likeness resulted in a quasi free agency system in college athletics.

Pitt lost Jordan Addison to Southern Cal after the 2021 season in which he won the Biletnikoff Award as college football’s most outstanding receiver. Rather than return to Pitt, Addison left for the West Coast, where he later signed an NIL deal with United Airlines. Terms were not disclosed, but United and USC had worked together in the past.

Such deals can exceed well more than $1 million.

“First of all, we have to do it to keep up with the landscape of college athletics,” Bickell said. “If we don’t provide opportunities for players, I don’t think we’re going to get to the next level. I see championships.

“You get addicted to this stuff. We’re addicted to winning. That’s what we do. Anything I can do to help win, that’s really what I was born to do, create the swell. That’s in my DNA.”

Scott Hanawalt, an Alliance 412 board member, said the group has rounded up several “very generous donors.” Bickell said funding reaches into the millions of dollars.

“We can measure up to anyone,” Bickell said. “We have the resources to do that.”

There are limitations, however.

“It’s the how. How does the culture align — the university, the teams — to what we’re trying to build here?” he said. “It’s really about the players. We could have $20 (million), $25 (million), $30 million tomorrow if we wanted to, just based on our current set of donors. But we’re trying to do things the right way, the long way.

“We’re not looking to just go out and pay millions of dollars to one five-star (recruit) for flash. … That flash sometimes is all about the headline vs. what’s going to win on Saturday.

“Don’t get me wrong. We’d love to get the best players here, but it’s also got to be a cultural fit.”

With NIL in play, donors such as Bickell who pool their resources to help attract athletes are a major component in an athletic department’s ability to compete.

“If you’re not playing in NIL,” he said, “you’re a lost cause at this level.”

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