Mike Sanford has known Louisville head coach Charlie Strong since both were assistants at Notre Dame in the mid-1990s. As Strong was considered for several head coaching jobs since, he and Sanford kept in touch about reuniting.

The two are now back together with the Cardinals, as Sanford will serve as Strong's offensive coordinator after spending five years as the head coach at UNLV. Both Strong and Sanford spent time working for Urban Meyer -- Strong for the past several seasons at Florida, and Sanford as the offensive coordinator at Utah. I caught up with Sanford this week to talk about his offensive philosophies and what he has planned for the spring. This is Part I of my interview; check back later today for Part II.

Is there a pretty smooth working relationship between you and Charlie because of your background together?


Mike Sanford: Yeah, there is. We haven't worked together for a while but there is a good working relationship.

This is his first head coaching job, but you've been in that chair. Are there things you can help him with if he needs advice?


MS: What I'm trying to do is, you want to fit in and do your job and fulfill your role. And my role is to be the offensive coordinator and do a great job with that. Now, along the way, if he asks me questions I will answer them. But I think he's had some great people he's worked with when you talk about Urban Meyer, Lou Holtz, Steve Spurrier -- those are pretty good guys in his background. So I'll only give him advice when called upon.

He's been a defensive guy most of his career, so does he rely on you heavily for the offensive side of things or does he have his own philosophy there?

MS: I think there's a little bit of both. I think he has some strong beliefs about what he wants offensively, and then there's the details of it, I guess, that he's leaving up to me and the offensive staff.

It's interesting because there's a lot of crossover because of him being with Urban the last several years and me coaching two years with Urban. There's a lot of familiarity for me, a lot of carryover in the system. And then Kenny Carter, having come over from Florida as a running backs coach, it's been really good to communicate with him about where the system was when we were at Utah, where it evolved with him and where it evolved with us [at UNLV] and meshing the two. It's really exciting to be involved with that, to see where it's gone in the two places and then tie it together.

So can we expect a Florida-esque or Utah-esque spread offense at Louisville?

MS: We're going to be a Florida-ish spread offense. You know when people say spread offense, there's a lot of different types and categories and classifications. We're going to be most similar to Florida. Now we don't have a Tim Tebow. I think what you've got to do, and I believe there's enough flexibility in what we're putting in, that we have to cater to our personnel. That's an important thing. You've got to cater what you do in your spread offense to your quarterback and to what kind of receivers and linemen and backs you have. So we're going to tailor it to our personnel.

That system is known for having mobile quarterbacks. Is that what you're looking for here?

MS: I think ideally what we'd like to have is an athletic quarterback that's a really good passer. And I'm very excited about it because I think we've got some guys in the program that can do that. And we also signed a quarterback out of Cincinnati named Dominique Brown who's that type of player.

You have three quarterbacks -- Adam Froman, Justin Burke and Will Stein -- who all started games last year. What will the competition be like in the spring with those guys?

MS: We're going to take a look at it and leave the competition wide open. See who ends up being the starter and where it goes from there.

Coming into a new situation where you haven't seen the players in live action firsthand, how do you hit the ground running for spring? Is it just watching a lot of film?


MS: That's really a hard thing. I would say a combination of two things: Watching video of them from last year and then watching them in the offseason program. There's enough things we do -- we obviously can't have a football in our offseason program -- but there's enough things we can do to evaluate what guys can do and what guys can't do.

How about changing the terminology? How much of a process is that and is that one of the more difficult things to put in for spring?

MS: That's a definite process. We're racing against time to do two things. Number one, when Charlie came from the bowl game and I came to meet him January 2nd, we got together and we threw ourselves into recruiting. And the whole staff threw themselves into recruiting until signing day. We didn't have a chance to talk much football until the week of signing day. That was the first time we talked football as an offensive staff.

So we are in a race to get on the same page as an offensive staff. It's not like you come in and say, "OK, here's the system. Everybody learn it." Obviously we have a philosophy and we'll be able to do what we're going to do. But I want to get input and use terminology and backgrounds that our coaches are comfortable with and used to so we're all speaking the same language. So there's a race to go through the offense and get it all in and still teach it to the players, because then they have to also learn the new terminology.