Perhaps the biggest question Louisville fans wanted answered when Charlie Strong was hired to coach the Cardinals was who would run his offense.

Strong, after all, has spent his entire career on the defensive side of the ball, developing into one of the nation's top coordinators the past several years at Florida. Louisville fans, meanwhile, have grown used to wide-open, entertaining offenses.

Strong saw lots of innovative offensive play calling as he tried to stop Urban Meyer's attack in practice with the Gators. And he's entrusting his own offense to someone very familiar with Meyer's schemes.

Former UNLV coach Mike Sanford will be Louisville's offensive coordinator. Sanford was Meyer's offensive coordinator at Utah in 2003 and 2004, helping guide Alex Smith into being the No. 1 overall pick in the 2005 NFL draft.

Sanford didn't have as much success as a head coach, going just 16-43 at UNLV. His Rebels averaged just 24.8 points per game in 2009, which ranked 78th nationally. The year before, they scored 25.6 points per game. On his way out the door, Sanford said it wasn't a coaching problem at UNLV as much as it was the program's lack of commitment to winning.

Not all coordinators make good head coaches. It's fair to question how much influence Sanford actually had with Utah's offense since Meyer is seen as the mastermind of that attack. And Sanford won't have a lot to work with at Louisville, which ranked last in the Big East in scoring in 2009.

But Sanford has a good pedigree, at least. And his hiring shows that Strong wants to run some of the same Florida system with the Cardinals, minus the Gators' talent.