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There’s still no word when Syracuse and Pitt will join the ACC, but the conference has announced its scheduling plans for when the Orange and Panthers arrive.

The ACC wraps up its winter meetings in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., today, and the future scheduling formats have been approved by the league’s faculty athletics representatives and athletics directors.

“We have been engaged in discussions on the various options for integrating Pitt and Syracuse since early fall,” ACC commissioner John Swofford said in a news release. “It’s a tremendous tribute to the leadership at our schools that we will be able to seamlessly add Pitt and Syracuse at the appropriate time when they become full playing members.”

There won’t be monumental shifts in either of the league’s marquee sports. They’ll look like this:

Football

The Atlantic and Coastal divisions will remain the same. Syracuse will join the Atlantic and Pitt will join the Coastal. The current primary crossover partners will remain the same (for instance, North Carolina and N.C. State will continue to play every year) with Syracuse and Pitt becoming primary crossover partners with each other.

When Pitt and Syracuse join the ACC, the league will play a nine-game conference schedule. Each team will play all six in its division each year, plus its primary crossover partner each year and two rotating opponents from the opposite division. In a six-year cycle, each team will play each divisional opponent and its primary crossover partner six times (three home and three away) while also playing each rotating crossover opponent two times (one home and one away).

Basketball

No divisions. Modified four-team pods.

The ACC, which plays a 16-game conference schedule now, will play an 18 league games beginning in 2012-13 — regardless of whether Syracuse and Pitt are members yet or not.

When Pitt and Syracuse join, each school will have one primary partner — North Carolina and Duke; N.C. State and Wake Forest; Boston College and Syracuse; Clemson and Georgia Tech; Florida State and Miami; Maryland and Pitt; Virginia and Virginia Tech.

In a three-year cycle, teams will play every league opponent at least once with the primary partners playing home and away annually while the other 12 rotate in groups of four: one year both home and away; one year at home only; and one year away only.

In short: primary partners play a total of six times in three years and all other conference opponents play four times.
The goal of the format was for each program to see opponents with more regularity and hopefully create an increase in competitive balance.

All 14 teams will compete in the ACC basketball tournaments. A decision on the tournament formats will be announced at a later date.