Small Block Pulleys

This might be a silly question, but what would be the need for an idler pulley? The belt setup on my car currently works fine with the AC not hooked up. Could I not remove the compressor from the car and still run with the setup as it is? That would allow me to reinstall the AC system if I ever decided to do that.

unless your car uses a dedicated belt to run A/C only you need to change pulleys or reroute belt to make everything work without the compressor there