The Rhodes Trust on Friday released its account of the events surrounding the much-publicized quandary faced last fall by Yale’s star quarterback over whether to participate in finalists’ interviews in Atlanta for the coveted Rhodes scholarship or to play against Harvard on the same day in New Haven.

In a rare public disclosure, the Trust confirmed that it had put on hold the candidacy of Patrick Witt upon learning that a fellow student had filed a complaint against him. Elliot Gerson, the American secretary of the Trust, made clear to Yale officials on Nov. 4 that Witt’s candidacy could not move forward unless the university re-endorsed him in writing by Nov. 15, according to the statement. No such re-endorsement was filed before Witt’s announcement Nov. 13 that he would forgo his chance at the scholarship to play on Nov. 19 in Yale’s biggest game of the year.

The Rhodes statement was originally given to the public editor of The New York Times, who was preparing a column about an article first published on the Times’ Web site on Jan. 26 detailing the problems with Witt’s candidacy because of the complaint, which was an allegation of sexual assault against a fellow student. That article had prompted an angry response from Witt, 22, who is currently training in hopes of an N.F.L. career.

Witt and his agent, Mark Magazu, have insisted to The Times and other news organizations that his Rhodes application was never suspended, as The Times reported, and that, in any case, he had decided to withdraw from the competition before he was told, on Nov. 9 or 10, that the allegation had obligated Yale to formally re-endorse him.

“It was essentially a moot point,” Witt said in an interview with The Yale Daily News published Wednesday.

But the timeline offered by Rhodes officials, and confirmed Friday by a Yale spokesman, differs from Witt’s account. Witt was informed Nov. 8 of the need for a re-endorsement to proceed, according to the timeline.

Witt, a record-setting quarterback in his final season at Yale, learned Oct. 31 that he had been selected as a finalist for the Rhodes Scholarship, the prestigious award given every year to 32 students across the country whose achievements in academics and activities, and whose personal character, have been deemed exceptional.

According to the Rhodes statement, it was the next day that Trust officials told the Yale administrator who oversees fellowships that they had been informed of the complaint against Witt, which was being handled internally by Yale.

On Nov. 3, according to the Trust, Gerson, the senior Rhodes official in the United States, told Witt in a phone conversation that Rhodes knew of the complaint. On Nov. 4, a Friday, Gerson “informed Yale officials that the Trust would require Yale to re-confirm in writing by Nov. 15 its endorsement of Mr. Witt and asked Yale to explain to Mr. Witt the Trust’s decision to ask for Yale’s endorsement anew.”

It took four days for Yale to tell Witt, according to the statement.

The Yale spokesman who confirmed the accuracy of the Rhodes timeline declined to say why the university did not respond more quickly to Gerson’s request. Yale has also declined to discuss whether it would have provided a re-endorsement, or whether it had begun a process to consider doing so.

Witt did not respond to repeated messages over several days before the publication of the original article. Magazu would not answer specific questions Friday but said Witt’s version of events was “factual and accurate.”

“To be clear: no one from Yale or the Rhodes Trust ever notified Patrick that he was ‘suspended,’ no documentation to this effect exists, and the Rhodes Trust has no formal process by which to ‘suspend’ a candidate,” Magazu said in a statement.

“We leave it to the public to evaluate the fairness, accuracy and intellectual honesty of any party that is now retrospectively applying a ‘characterization’ of events that took place in the past,” Magazu continued. “At the time these decisions were being made, nobody had ever used the word ‘suspended’ and no one was operating under the context or concept of ‘suspension.’ ”

Gerson, in a brief interview Friday, said the word “suspended” was “a very reasonable characterization of what happened.”

Neither Yale nor Magazu would say why Witt — or Yale — did not inform the Trust of his decision once he made it. Magazu and Witt have said he told his parents, coaches and friends earlier but wanted to wait until after the Nov. 12 game against Princeton to make a public statement.

Nothing of the allegation, and the potential problem it posed for Witt’s candidacy, was public knowledge during his well-chronicled decision-making process. From Nov. 1 to Nov. 13, there were numerous newspaper and television accounts portraying Witt’s situation as a difficult, even unfair, choice for an exemplary student-athlete to have to make — picking between his team and his personal, perhaps once-in-a-lifetime, academic opportunity.

The woman who accused Witt of sexual assault had chosen to resolve her complaint through what Yale calls its “informal process,” which essentially amounts to mediation rather than an investigation and does not yield a finding of guilt or innocence, a punishment or any disciplinary record. The Times has not spoken to the woman.

Witt was told on Nov. 1, after a meeting with the professor who runs Yale’s committee that handles sexual-misconduct complaints and the dean of student affairs, to stay away from the woman. Magazu has confirmed that the complaint was of a sexual assault but said that the encounter was consensual.

Witt is no longer enrolled at Yale. He completed his class work last semester and is working on his senior essay.