It might have seemed like a harder schedule when it was first announced on Wednesday. It might have felt like the Florida State football team would have been better off with its pre-coronavirus slate of games.

But in reality, now that rival Florida is off the slate thanks to the Southeastern Conference's Thursday vote, almost nothing has changed -- from a competitive standpoint -- for the Seminoles in 2020.

The combined record for the 11 FBS opponents on FSU's original schedule was 87-56 one year ago. That's a winning percentage of 60.8 percent.

The combined record for the 10 FBS opponents on the new schedule was 75-55 a year ago. That's a winning percentage of 57.7 percent.

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And if you look at conference records between the two schedules, they are an exact match. The eight opponents that were on the pre-Covid slate were 32-32 in conference games in 2019. The nine opponents (not counting Notre Dame, of course, because the Fighting Irish didn't play a full ACC schedule) on the revised schedule were 37-37 in conference games in 2019.

So ... dead even.

When the ACC announced on Wednesday that FSU would be playing at Notre Dame as part of the conference's 10-plus-one model, it seemed as if the schedule became significantly harder for the Seminoles. But that was because we believed the plus-one would be Florida.

We have since learned that the SEC will be playing conference-only games, meaning the Gators won't be on FSU's schedule for the first time since the late-1950s. That also means Mike Norvell's first season as head coach at Florida State got a tad bit easier.

Notre Dame essentially just changes places with Florida as far as tough opponents go. And as the numbers show, the rest of the new ACC teams didn't make anything appreciably harder.

Florida State was going to play eight bowl teams before the pandemic altered the landscape. Now the Seminoles are going to play seven.