MORGANTOWN — West Virginia University athletic department officials revealed Tuesday they made numerous withdrawals over the past several years from an account designed specifically for football recruiting expenses.

The handling of that 1100 Club account reportedly was a source of consternation for former coach Rich Rodriguez and could be a component of his forthcoming response to the lawsuit filed against him by WVU.

However, WVU Athletic Director Ed Pastilong and Associate Athletic Director for Finance and Administration Russ Sharp said there was nothing secretive or wrong about what happened.

“The definition as to what the fund is intended for is what was followed to its entirety,” Pastilong said.

The Mountaineer Athletic Club, the athletic department’s fundraising arm, is responsible for raising the 1100 Club money.

Rodriguez suggested the club be started several years ago to fund the rental of private aircraft for recruiting purposes. Club members needed to donate a minimum of $1,100 annually.

Rodriguez was deeply involved and committed to maintaining relationships with donors.

The MAC submits the money to the WVU Foundation as a gift and the gift is then deposited into the 1100 Club account.

Sharp, who could not say how many withdrawals had been made, said “almost 99 percent” were to pay costs for the football team’s training table— meals provided to the players at the Puskar Center. Sharp said a single bill was between $5,000 and $6,000 and that WVU would sometimes receive multiple invoices at once.

“It just depended when the bill showed up,” he said.

An exact figure was not available, but Sharp said the withdrawals would have totaled no more than $200,000 over the past two-plus years. Sharp said a subsequent deposit always followed the withdrawals.

The WVU Foundation, chartered in 1954 to help WVU manage contributions, is an independent 501(c)(3) corporation. Its status as a nonprofit organization makes its records unattainable by the Freedom of Information Act.

“There was a purpose for the account and from time to time — and Rich was aware of this — we paid other football-related expenses out of that account for cash flow purposes,” Sharp said. “He was always aware of those kinds of transactions. We always talked about that and we would always replace the funds.”

Rodriguez and WVU are embroiled in a testy dispute regarding the status of the buyout in his contract.

WVU believes it is owed the full $4 million. WVU filed a declaratory judgment last month seeking the money and added an amended complaint Sunday to include a breach of contract.

Rodriguez’s final contract said he owed WVU one-third of the $4 million 30 days after his resignation. The first payment was due last Saturday and the university has yet to receive anything.

Meanwhile, Jeff Wakefield, a partner in the Charleston firm of Flaherty, Sensabaugh & Bonasso, which is handling the case for WVU, said interest in the amount of about $4,000 a day continues to accumulate. WVU will seek whatever money it is owed up until the conclusion of the case, Wakefield added.

Wakefield said the amended complaint now gives Rodriguez until Feb. 4 to respond to the lawsuit. On Monday, Rodriguez’s agent, Mike Brown, promised that his response would contain a “bombshell.”

“We have no reaction to that because we don’t have any idea what he’s talking about,” Wakefield said. “We view the case as a simple and straightforward contractual matter. We feel it very strongly favors the university.”

As for how the 1100 Club funds were used, Sharp said regular conversations with Rodriguez continued until Dec. 1, the day WVU lost to Pitt.

WVU Foundation President and Chief Executive Officer Wayne King said the athletic department asked the foundation to perform an audit of the account last month.

“I had our finance group look at the charges made to that account and every one was done with the appropriate approval of the athletic department,” King said. “I don’t see anything inappropriate.”

Rodriguez had access to the account and monitored it regularly. Over time, he sought greater control of the fund and the university refused to go along, a source said.

That, combined with the way money was spent, became one of his complaints about the athletic department, the source said.

Sharp said borrowing money from the account, which generated around $327,000 last year, was a necessity.

“If the funds in the MAC were low at some point, we used the 1100 Club for cash flow purposes,” he said. “There was usually a fairly good balance in there and some of our other funds were used for reimbursing tuition bills and other significant bills at certain times of the year. If you’re paying $5 million and $6 million tuition bills at different times of the year, it depended on where the balances were.”

The 1100 Club was created in 2001 to provide “a significant portion of the resources necessary to successfully recruit ‘blue-chip’ student-athletes at the regional and national level,” according to the MAC Web site.

The club now has more than 300 members.

Rodriguez was largely responsible for the club’s creation and hoped it would allow him and his staff to travel more conveniently for recruiting purposes

“Rich was intricately involved in dealing with the 1100 Club since its inception,” MAC Executive Director Larry Aschebrook said. “It was a great idea and it’s been a great tool for our donors to have a closer relationship with the program and to feel they have some ownership over the project.

“As a football coach, Rich really believed in seeing those dollars being used to raise recruiting efforts and assist in recruiting efforts.”

The MAC Web site defines the 1100 Club’s goal as helping to “offset the escalating costs associated specifically with airplane travel during NCAA-sanctioned football recruiting periods.”

The training table transactions would not fall under that description, but Pastilong and Sharp said it was understood the fund could be used to handle other football-related expenses.