RALEIGH, N.C. -- The nine athletic directors from the Atlantic Coast Conference met for five hours Wednesday to discuss scheduling in basketball and football in an expanded 11-team league.

There was no formal vote taken on any scheduling proposal, ACC officials said.

Athletic directors from Miami and Virginia Tech, two schools that will enter the ACC in 2004, were not present at the meeting in Greensboro.

"We spent most of the time talking about concepts," North Carolina State athletic director Lee Fowler said. "It's not very easy to grasp this stuff if you haven't been doing it with 11 teams before."

Important to coaches and fans of the league is the basketball schedule. The nine ACC schools have played each other home-and-away in a round-robin format.

That will likely end in an 11-team league, which was expanded in June.

While 16-, 18- and 20-game conference schedules were discussed at the meeting, the league's basketball coaches favor a 16-game league slate. They believe that allows for enough flexibility in scheduling non-conference games.

The ADs appear ready to support that proposal, meaning natural rivals would have to be established with some ACC teams playing other league teams just once a season.

"To me, one of the things that's intriguing about our league and is unique and special is there is a double round-robin," Wake Forest basketball coach Skip Prosser said. "In the big picture, is that a sacrificial lamb to expansion? Probably, but we'll see."

In football, the idea of breaking the league into five- and six-team divisions was floated, along with the Big Ten model -- another conference that has 11 teams.

Rivalry games would also have to be set up if the ACC decided to go with the Big Ten model.

The ACC has petitioned the NCAA to allow conferences with 10 or more teams to hold a football playoff game. The rule now requires a league to have 12 teams. A decision on that is expected in April.

Fowler said the breakdown of divisions or who would play who in the rivalry games was not discussed Wednesday.

"We would have been there another four hours if we talked about that," he said.

A final vote on the scheduling could come as early as the end of the month when the league has one of its major business meetings in Charlottesville, Va.

Officials from Miami and Virginia Tech are expected at that meeting.

Whether to hold a football playoff game in 2004 if the rule is changed will also be discussed, Fowler said.

"We need to go ahead and get these things resolved as soon as possible," Fowler said.