MORGANTOWN - It's been a year since Bob Huggins' homecoming, and West Virginia's basketball coach still doesn't have a formal contract with his alma mater.

Neither does Bill Stewart, three months after his promotion from interim to permanent head football coach on the heels of a Fiesta Bowl win.

Unlike other universities and professional sports, where getting contracts finalized is a high priority, things appear to be more laid back and old school at West Virginia. Handshake agreements have been good enough for Ed Pastilong, the athletic director since 1989.

"I'm comfortable,'' Pastilong recently said of such agreements.

Huggins and Stewart, both state natives and staunch backers of WVU, are currently bound by term sheets that pay them $800,000 in the first year of five-year deals.

The university released the term sheets Wednesday after The Associated Press filed a Freedom of Information Act request.

Huggins signed his term sheet on April 5, 2007, the day he arrived in West Virginia. It has a base salary of $150,000 - the maximum allowed by state law - and $650,000 in supplemental compensation in the first year, with $20,000 increases each year thereafter.

Stewart's term sheet, signed Jan. 2, the day the Mountaineers beat Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl, includes a $150,000 base salary and $550,000 in supplemental compensation in the first year, with $50,000 increases each year thereafter.

Both coaches will receive $100,000 retention bonuses - Huggins on Sept. 1, 2009, Stewart on Sept. 1 of this year - if they remain employed by the university.

"At some point we'll have a detailed contract completed,'' Pastilong said, adding that the term sheets are legal and binding. Term sheets are often used as templates for contracts.

"I don't need one,'' Huggins told the AP about the need for a contract. "I'm not going anywhere.''

That's what Rich Rodriguez said, too, after being courted by Alabama in December 2006.

Rodriguez, another homegrown football coach, then bolted for Michigan last December, eight months after his former neighbor, John Beilein, left WVU to join the Wolverines as basketball coach.

Now Rodriguez and the university are mired in a bitter public feud and a lawsuit over a $4 million buyout clause that Rodriguez claims he was pressured to sign - but was assured would never be enforced.

Beilein's departure also resulted in a brief dispute involving his contract. Beilein agreed to pay $1.5 million to resolve a penalty clause in his contract if he left before the five-year pact expired.

Both cases, however, don't appear to have changed WVU's practice.

While Huggins' term sheet has a $1 million buyout clause, Stewart's doesn't - that language in his term sheet was ordered removed by Pastilong.

Pastilong referred questions on the language's removal to Alex Macia, WVU's general counsel. Macia didn't immediately return a telephone message Wednesday afternoon.

The slow progress on Huggins' and Stewart's contracts could be a product of mutual friendship and respect. Mention Huggins or Stewart to Pastilong and he's more likely to reminisce about his relationship with both men than discuss the status of negotiations.

Pastilong has known Stewart for four decades. His friendship with Huggins started around 1975, when Huggins was a WVU basketball player and Pastilong was hired as the football team's recruiting coordinator. Huggins resigned at Kansas State two days after Beilein left.

Huggins' agent, Richard Katz of Cincinnati, said there have been no hurdles in getting the contract finalized.

"He's been depositing his paychecks. He has no problem with that,'' Katz said. "He's happy with the deal.''

When asked who his agent is, Stewart has a standard response, pointing at his right hand.

"That right there is my agent,'' he said. "Right there.''

Stewart said a contract is "the least of my worries.''

"I work for West Virginia University. I've got a great president, a great chief of staff. I've got a great AD and a great deputy AD. I trust those four men with my life. So why would I worry about a contract?''

But in today's college sports world, contracts are overwhelmingly the desired route.

"Term sheets and handshakes are really [relics] of the past,'' said John Nesheim, a lecturer on entrepreneurship at Cornell University and founder of the business consulting firm Nesheim Group.

The NCAA has no requirement for contracts, letting each member institution control its own budget, hiring and personnel decisions, said spokesman Erik Christianson.

Employment contracts with WVU are subject to review by the state attorney general's office. However, coaches' contracts are not, said Deputy Attorney General Dawn Warfield. And the state auditor's office only reviews vendors' contracts.

Ken Kendrick, managing general partner of the Arizona Diamondbacks and a WVU alumnus, doesn't agree with term sheets, especially if there's a gap between them and signed contracts. Kendrick was critical of WVU after Rodriguez left, saying he was disappointed in the lack of judgment and respect for a key employee.

Term sheets are "not a process we engage in,'' Kendrick said.

"It's better to document it and complete a deal,'' he said. "That's a good business practice in any business. I don't understand the need for a delay.''