SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- The decision, West Virginia president Mike Garrison stated plainly, was made by the athletic director.

Yet he and Ed Pastilong agreed that it needed to be made for the short term.

"Next year is very important, and we wanted the continuity," Garrison said yesterday, moments after interim head coach Bill Stewart was named head coach.

"We want our players and our staff to go into work Monday like they left Friday," Pastilong said after the morning news conference -- arranged barely six hours earlier -- at the team's Scottsdale Plaza Resort. "Continuity, when you have a Pat White returning and Steve Slaton [if he doesn't opt to enter the NFL draft] and Noel Devine, is important. We owe it to them to have another great year."

So they spent the past 18 days, since Rich Rodriguez announced his departure for Michigan, looking for a head coach that they ultimately found on their sideline and in their Puskar Center offices.

Pastilong said Stewart, named interim head coach four days into the search because of Rodriguez's exit paperwork, was mentioned on their search list at a Dec. 16 meeting among athletic department officials and search committee members. Stewart's name remained throughout, he said, even when Mountaineers administrators settled on Florida assistant head coach Doc Holliday and made an offer through back channels to Florida State coach-in-waiting Jimbo Fisher, who turned them down a day later when West Virginia officials altered their offer.

Declining to divulge any specifics about the search, Garrison said the committee -- him, Pastilong, assistant athletic director Mike Parsons, chief of staff Craig Walker and Board of Governors chairman Stephen Goodwin -- spoke with "double-digit" numbers of candidates. Pastilong added that they met with some and talked by telephone to others, men who were head coaches, assistant head coaches and football men with West Virginia ties. Pastilong said that on the second day of the search the committee secured the services of a consultant, who was out of the country for a time thereafter.

With consultant Chuck Neinas looking into a potential interview with East Carolina coach Skip Holtz -- Pirates officials declined comment when reached by reporters Wednesday before the Fiesta Bowl -- the Mountaineers administrators were gathering at University of Phoenix Stadium for Stewart's audition.

"We wanted to give coach Stewart an opportunity to coach up until and through the game. He had a few things on his plate," Blanda said.

"I've been interviewing, I'd say, for a couple of weeks," Stewart joked, casting a glance at Pastilong.

The rush of feelings from West Virginia's 48-28 upset of Oklahoma and the sight of Stewart being borne aloft on players' shoulders affected the search committee, Pastilong said.

After the game, they met at the team hotel, calling the absent Goodwin, and deciding to offer the job to Stewart. The interim head coach came to Pastilong's room, accepted the job and, within 10 minutes, had a five-year contract worth $4 million, the same as Rodriguez's hotly contested buyout.

"Somebody said, 'Were emotions involved?' Why, certainly," Pastilong said. "Emotions were running high. But objectivity and qualities were in place[, too.]"

Pastilong said of Gov. Joe Manchin, who denied playing a role in the search: "Did he conduct this search? No. But frankly we ran some things by him because he knows our athletic department. He knows our football program. He's a help to us."

Mountaineers players, senior captains and others, were consulted for their feedback. "We had a feel that they had a true affinity for Bill," Pastilong said.

Asked if Stewart, whose lower salary could mean that other coaching money might be used on assistants, Garrison said they would receive the resources like the ones Rodriguez asked for until his departure.

"We want to give coach Stewart, as well as give all our coaches at WVU, the materials they need to succeed," he said. "We're at a place as a university where we have to ask ourselves, 'do we want year in and year out Top 10 teams, not just in football and basketball but in all sports?' If the answer to that is yes, then we have to give them the tools they need to succeed. So I'm supportive."