Half full or half empty?

It appears to be a "glass half full or half empty" type of situation for new IU football coach Gerry DiNardo and his staff.\nFor the half-full argument, both sides in the Cream and Crimson spring football scrimmage Friday night at Memorial Stadium put up a heck of a fight. This led to a close game won by a last-second toss into the endzone to sophomore Travis Haney from senior quarterback Gibran Hamdan, giving the Crimson squad the 24-20 victory. \nAnd for the half empty: The second team (Cream) handled the first-team (Crimson) -- supposedly the projected starters -- so badly that the first-teamers needed a last-second play to beat the Cream team. \nDiNardo knows the Hoosiers are a long way from becoming a great football team; he has even said so. \nSo the optimism is minimal for a team that lost its major offensive components in newlydrafted Pittsburgh wide receiver Antwaan Randle El and team rushing leader Levron Williams. This could be seen by the sparse ground scattered across the East stands Friday.\nSenior quarterback Tommy Jones did bring some optimism to the Hoosier football table as he battled through his shoulder problems to throw for 162 yards and two touchdowns on 12-20 passing. Hamdan had a rough time and looked like he had just arrived from a baseball game -- a game the Hoosiers lost 14-11, 45 minutes before the scheduled start of the scrimmage. Hamdan went 16-33 with one touchdown and one interception while being sacked five times.\nAnd while Randle El's heir-apparent is still up in the air, so is the future for the rest of the football program, at least for next season. The offensive line will be good, just like last season, if and only if they can adjust to the added responsibility of a west coast offense. \nThe defense was young last year, which means they have a year of experience under their belt, which can only help. If the "D" can be as hard-nosed as defensive-line coach Joe Cullen's south Boston accent, then this defense will do nothing but improve. \nThe secondary will bust heads, the linebackers will reach the quarterback every now and then, and the d-line should slow down William and Mary's running game, but afterward, it's a complete toss-up. \nThe true problem for these Hoosiers could be the running game. During several scrimmages this spring, fumbles ran rampant as the IU backs, centers and quarterbacks just had issues holding on to the ball.\nIt didn't help that senior fullback Jeremi Johnson wasn't even dressed. Let's hope he has gotten his weight down from the defensive end-like 280 to the 255 he says he weighs. Yamar Washington and Brian Lewis are talented runners, but in order for the Hoosier rushing attack to be a force in the Big Ten, Johnson needs to take a majority of the hand-offs.\nLet's just get one thing straight: DiNardo is a winner. He won as an All-American tackle at Notre Dame. He won a national championship as an assistant at Colorado. He won at Vanderbilt, despite never having a winning record, but 5-6 IS winning at Vandy. He even won in the toughest football conference in the nation with his two Southeastern Conference western division titles at Louisiana State. \nHe just won't win next season with these Hoosiers in the Big Ten, at least not with the condition his team is in now. \nLet's hope the Hoosiers prove me wrong. Let's hope the football team plays the underdog role as well as the men's and women's basketball squads did this year. Let's hope that west coast style DiNardo brings will be a new threat in the IU repertoire. But all of that, for now, is just hope. \nRight now, the Hoosiers need to get into shape like DiNardo has been preaching since day one, and they will, eventually. Will it be in enough time to give the Hoosiers a long shot of having a winning record and making it to its first bowl since 1993? You'll have to wait until August for that answer. \nWho knows how these Hoosiers will respond to DiNardo's new system when it really matters. That's why they play the games folks. That's why they play the games.