Kentucky's new offensive coordinator, Shannon Dawson, met the local media for the first time Wednesday morning, and I can report he has deep dimples and a distinctive Louisiana drawl.

That is if you were wondering about those sorts of things.

Chances are you are much more concerned with this sort of thing: Can he get the ball in the end zone?

That's what the former West Virginia offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach was hired by Mark Stoops to do as successor to Neal Brown, now Troy's head coach.

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Dawson played and coached for an Air Raid guy, WVU head coach Dana Holgorsen, who played for the original Air Raid guy, Hal Mumme, at Iowa Wesleyan. Mumme famously first brought the Air Raid to Kentucky in 1997. Brown played for Mumme, then coached under Tony Franklin, who was an Air Raid guy, making Brown an Air Raid guy.

Thing is, these days, there are different kinds of Air Raid guys. Mumme's teams still throw the ball until the quarterback's arm falls off. At Washington State, Mike Leach chucks the ball from opening kickoff until the final horn.

Art Briles at Baylor and Kevin Sumlin at Texas A&M are Air Raid guys who prefer air travel but also dabble in something called the ground game.

So what kind of Air Raid guy is Dawson?

"I'm going to tell you you're going to see the evolution of the Air Raid that I'm doing now," he said. "There were times throughout the course of years when we were throwing the ball probably 80 to 90 percent of the time.

"In my opinion, if you want quarterbacks to stay on their own two feet and to stay healthy, good luck with that in today's football, because those D-linemen are rushing pretty fast. And so we're going to do some things that keep defenses honest and keep 'em off balance."

Having your quarterback stay on his feet is preferable to having a quarterback on his back. So in the four years that Holgorsen and Dawson were together in Morgantown, they ran the football more each season than they did the previous one.

They went from being a finesse Air Raid team to a physical Air Raid team, which was the part that grabbed Stoops' attention.

"That evolution fired him up," Dawson said.

To be clear, Dawson didn't call the plays at West Virginia. Holgorsen did. In fact, Dawson admitted that a reason he took the Kentucky job was that he gets final say on what is relayed to the quarterback. He was heavily involved in WVU's preparation and decision-making.

"Between every drive, when he clicked back on the offense (on the headset), I needed to have a plan for him," Dawson said. "I'd have to say, look, 'This is the information we're getting. This is the way we need to attack.' Before every play, I would give him a suggestion. ... I don't know, maybe 85 percent (of the time), we were on the exact same page."

Since Stoops arrived at UK, the offensive marketing plan hasn't been on the same page with the game plan. Brown's return was sold as Air Raid's return. It didn't turn out to be the return of Mumme's Air Raid.

Judging by the trend at West Virginia, expect Dawson's Air Raid to be even more of a variation of the original. And the truth is, the Air Raid that most programs run these days is closer to the Holgorsen/Dawson version than the Mumme/Leach version.

Besides, what does it matter? Take Monday night's national title game. Oregon used its signature: cutting edge, up-tempo offense. Ohio State used an offense that relied heavily on two or three basic running plays. And Oregon couldn't stop it.

In the end, that's what you want: an offense that's difficult to stop. It doesn't matter whether it's called the Air Raid or the ground-and-pound. It doesn't matter whether the coordinator has dimples and a Louisiana drawl, although those are certainly points in his favor.

How many times can he get the ball in the end zone? That's how Shannon Dawson will be judged.