There are times when you don't need to come up with a new line. An oldy but goody says it best.

So we must thank the undying wisdom of Yogi Berra here, whose greatest line, "It ain't over until it's over," works better than anything else we can think of after Cal's 15-14 win over a USC team that failed to answer the second-half bell Saturday at the Coliseum.

It's over, Clay Helton & Co. No matter how you finish out, it's over.

Too many unfixed mistakes. Too much indiscipline. Too many lazy, unchallenging practices. Too many bad decisions. Too much lack of confidence in one another and a failure to trust that's everywhere -- including on the USC sideline.

Not to mention too many losses in a Coliseum streak that has gone from 19 straight wins to two straight losses -- both against teams that had no business beating USC.

How in the world do you lose to a team that had three first downs in the first half against you? And 69 yards of offense?

Here's how. You give them nine points to start the second half, a second half where you had the ball first. Cal could not have won this game unless USC gave it to them. That was the one thing USC could not do and USC did it.

So for anyone who thinks "this program is in good shape," we beg to differ. You're headed to the Rose Bowl next week to play a 2-8 UCLA team that knows for absolutely certain it's going to take USC down. Just the way Arizona State and Cal did.

USC is easy pickings. The Pac-12 knows it. And USC knows it.

But what do we get in the post-game presser? "It wasn't one person who lost this game," Clay said, clearly trying to deflect blame from seniors Toa Lobendahn, the off-target snapper all season who gifted Cal their first two points with his 22-yard oversnap into the end zone for a safety just 57 seconds after the Trojans came out for the second half.

Or maybe it was for Iman Marshall's lack of self-discipline in earning an unsprtsmanlike conduct penalty giving Cal a first down after two typically incompetent Pac-12 officials ruled a catch for a first down good when it was clear on replay that the receiver had half his foot on the line. So after an embarrassing how many minutes it took to own up to the fact that, of course, they missed the call, they still were able to award Cal the first down that let them ice the game with 2:40 left.

It would have been fourth and 13 at the Cal 43. Instead it was first and 10 for Cal at the USC 42. And having squandered their timeouts, USC could do little to get the ball back. And that was it.

Toa, great young man that he is, solid Trojan and maybe USC's best O-lineman, should not have been in that position. By the end of August, it was obvious: He couldn't snap it. Not consistently. And with an 18-year-old freshman quarterback, it was extremely unfair to saddle him with this handicap.

And now, talented as JT Daniels is, as high a ceiling as he has, half the people on this board think he's the problem -- on a night when he was 15 of 20 for 147 yards and two touchdowns in the first half without an interception.

When it's really the coach, the coaches, the offense, the offensive line, the patterns, the play-calling, the whole deal that's taking this program down. But how much easier to make it about the kid QB? How much easier to throw him out too. Get that other guy who lost here by three points two weeks ago. Yeah, that's the answer. Blame somebody. Blame everybody.

"We win as a team, we lose as a team," Clay said, "we came up one point short." But gave away two on that one snap, although Clay played that down, noting that there were "74 snaps tonight, 73 were perfect." Like a pilot who makes all but one "perfect" landing. That one miss matters.

And all USC got out of those 73 were 14 points. Just that one bad snap gave away two. And in a game where you were "one point short," to quote Clay, giving away two is a big deal. It's like the difference between a 14-13 win and a 15-14 loss, if we've doen the math correctly.

And sure, in a week when Clay had to let one "family" member in O-line coach Neil Callaway go, he wasn't about to let "one of the loves of my life," as Clay described Toa after the game, go. "He will be our center."

But lose next week and Toa -- "a man of honor and a great football player" who "has worked tirelessly on it," Clay said of his snapping -- won't be Clay's -- or anyone's -- center in a bowl game unless USC upsets Notre Dame. And even against UCLA, give away nine points to start the second half and you're going to be in trouble in a game that will literally save the Bruins' season and extract Chip Kelly from that deep first-year hole he's in. After all, UCLA beat Cal 37-7.

Toa handled it like a man, as you would expect. Toa said he's "always thinking" about whether center is the right position for him "but I'm not trying to take anybody else's job." And of course, he shouldn't have to think that thought. That's why you pay a head coach nearly $3 million a year to think that thought and make that call.

Not to decide it because someone is "one of the loves of my life." You're a football coach, Clay. Whether you love Toa or hate him is irrelevant. Can he do the job without giving the game away and making life miserable for your quarterback? The answer of course is no, he can't. But apparently that doesn't matter to you.

You'd rather take the entire team down than give up on one of your special guys, which is self-absorbed and just plain selfish.

It's not about how you, or Toa, or Callaway or Tee Martin feel, it's about doing what's right for this USC football team that is fading fast in a town in love with the Rams, the Dodgers and the Lakers. Not a place for irrelevant losers, which USC is oh-so-close to becoming.

"I think it's in a good place," Clay said of the program, although the shouting match on the sideline between Isaiah Langley and JT says it's not. And while both players denied that anything happened, the TV didn't lie.

But what are you supposed to do if your coaches can't get it right? Yeah, you take things into your own hands out of the sheer frustration of knowing you should not be losing these games.

"It is frustrating," Chris Brown said of a second half that saw the USC offense limited to zero points and 40 yards on 31 plays as USC's average yards per play dropped from 5.75 at halftime to 3.8 at game's end.

"It's the same thing all year," JT said, including himself in the litany of players making bad reads, bad blocking pickups, penalties, dropped passes. "One guy messes up . . . you can't have two plays out of three when you all get it right, you need all three when you do."

And why is that happening, JT was asked. The young man who has an answer for everything because he's thought everything out, said simply: "I wish I could tell you."

He probably could. He's just not going to. Some of it, he credited, as did every USC player we talked to, to how "well-coached" Cal was and what a good job former USC defensive coordinator Justin Wilcox, now the Cal head coach in his second season after being let go by Clay, was doing there.

That's something you never hear said about this USC team -- or coaching staff. Although the other part of that, that USC is talented but soft, was not the case tonight. USC played hard. For the defense, this was a winning effort easily. Except on this night.

But Cal was singing a much different tune. "We practice so hard every day," Cal linebacker Jordan Kunaszyk said in words no USC player on this team can utter. "We weren't playing against the logo and we weren't playing against the history" he said of snapping USC's 14-game win streak against Cal here in the Coliseum.

Asked what can they do about the problems USC faces, Cameron Smith said "I don't think that's something I can say . . . that's for Coach Helton."

As for the USC fans booing Clay and Trojans as they exited into the tunnel, Cam spoke those words that express every Trojans thoughts about so much of what happened here: "It sucks," Cam said.

And it needs to be over.

*** You can contact Dan Weber by emailing weber@uscfootballcom.