It's terribly unfortunate for the schools involved but untimately I think the Carholic 7 taking so long to back out doomed the football schools in their attemp to make a coast to coast league. Had UConn, USF, and Cincy known that they'd soon be abandoned by their non-FB mates I think the direction thing took would have looked radically different.

If the western gambit was to work they needed a more steady home for the western schools' Olympic sports. Truthfully they needed to bring in 6-8 western schools that could form a division:

Houston
SMU
Boise St
San Diego St
BYU
AFA
Tulsa
UNLV

This group could function as its own conference, while an eastern league of UConn, Temple, Cincy, Memphis, UCF, USF, ECU and (Navy FB only) with a few non-FB members like Dayton and VCU essentially partner with them for a media contract and title game.

To make the cross country model to work they needed more western schools