Imagine future Pac-12 games being played in L.A. without USC or UCLA

We love fresh thinking. We love creativity and originality. We love people who adjust to new and different situations by responding to the unique needs of the moment instead of resting on how things have been done in the past.

Trojans Wire talked to college sports and higher education consultant Tony Altimore on Tuesday as part of our live show with Mark Rogers at The Voice of College Football. Tony blew us away with the depth and diversity of his knowledge about higher education and why USC is such a good institutional and cultural fit for the Big Ten.

Beyond the USC-specific piece of the puzzle, however, Tony had great ideas for how to make other conferences competitive and robust in the future.

If the Pac-12 is going to survive, and if the various other non-Big Ten, non-SEC conferences are going to have a reasonably prosperous future, they need fresh ideas. More than that, they need to find ways to maximize the resources of their members.

We love George Kliavkoff here at Trojans Wire. We recognize that he made a substantial, good-faith effort to help USC football and put the Trojans in a better position to succeed by reforming the Pac-12 Championship Game format. Kliavkoff did more for USC football in one year on the job than Larry Scott did in a decade-long tenure.

USC’s departure can’t be laid at Kliavkoff’s feet. Larry Scott and the Pac-12 CEO Group have to own that failure. Kliavkoff is left having to clean up this mess, keep the Pac-12 intact, and carve out a viable path forward.

Obviously, job number one for Kliavkoff is to keep the Pac-12 from splintering, so we know he’s really busy on that front. However, if he can prevent the conference from dying, he then needs to implement ideas which can squeeze more dollars from every conference member, and create greater cohesion among conference members.

This is where we bring the conversation back to Tony Altimore. At 56:25 of this video at The Voice of College Football, Altimore offers a novel idea:…