The ACC will play a nine-game schedule in football, and every team will play in the ACC basketball tournament once Syracuse and Pittsburgh join the league.
Conference officials announced Friday how the new schools will be incorporated once they leave the Big East. ACC commissioner John Swofford said it's still unclear when that will happen, because Big East bylaws require a 27-month notice for a school to leave.
"This just puts us in position of being further ready to accept them competitively as soon as they can join and as soon as that's worked out between the two schools and the Big East," Swofford said.
The conference's annual winter meetings marked the first time representatives from Syracuse and Pittsburgh were involved in ACC discussions. They couldn't vote because they're not yet full members, but Swofford said each school was "a full participant" and "they were supportive of everything that was done."
The league will maintain its divisional alignments for football. Syracuse will join the Atlantic Division, and Pittsburgh will join the Coastal. The two will be cross-division partners for scheduling purposes, meaning they'll play each other every year.
In basketball, the league assigns partners to ensure that two schools play each other twice every year. Once the league expands to 14 teams, the partners will be Duke-North Carolina, N.C. State-Wake Forest, Boston College-Syracuse, Clemson-Georgia Tech, Florida State-Miami, Maryland-Pittsburgh and Virginia-Virginia Tech.
The league previously announced it would play an 18-game basketball schedule next season regardless of whether the new schools have joined by then.
Swofford said that league schools decided on the expanded conference schedules because "you want to see and play each other as much as possible."
In other sports except baseball, all teams will play each conference team at least once.
Baseball teams currently do not play all other league opponents.
Also, the addition of Pittsburgh will give the ACC four gymnastics programs, the number required to hold a conference championship. The league held a gymnastics championship in 1984.
Volleyball will be the only sport without a conference tournament and will continue to determine its champion by regular-season play.
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