C-USA schools, MAC schools, and Sun Belt schools may not want to join the Pac-X for whatever reason. At least there is always the possibility they want to join a conference that is closer to home or form a brand new conference. My underlying point is that it is in the Pac-X's best interest to get to 8 full members as quickly as possible to satisfy the agreement with the NCAA. Then the conference can consider poaching from conferences located east of the Mississippi River. If the Pac-X can't fulfill its part of the agreement with the NCAA in time because it waited to try to poach from conferences east of the Mississippi River, then it runs the risk of losing both its DI-FBS status and NCAA automatic bids to most/all of the NCAA tournaments (including March Madness) because it may not have enough members, who played with each in another conference long enough, to fulfill the bylaw requirements for automatic bids. A perfect example is the Great West Conference which was originally founded as a DI football-only conference in 2004. It later switched to a multi-sport conference and eventually ceased to exist in 2013. Even after it decided to drop football, it failed because it could never have enough members remain in the conference long enough to satisfy the time requirement so it could receive automatic bids to the NCAA Tournaments. 31.3.4.2 Requirements -- National Collegiate Championship. [#] To be eligible for automatic qualification in a National Collegiate Championship, a member conference must meet the following general requirements: (Adopted: 1/9/06 effective 8/1/06) (a) Have at least six active members that sponsor the applicable sport in any division (Note: A provisional member in the process of becoming an NCAA member may not be used to meet the requisite number.); (b) The six active members must have conducted conference competition together for the preceding two years in the applicable sport; (c) There shall be no waivers of the two-year waiting period; and (d) Any new member added to a conference that is eligible for an automatic bid shall be immediately eligible to represent the conference as the automatic qualifier.