Under normal circumstances we would be less than 50 days away from the start of the college football season and a game with Bowling Green would start of Ohio State's 2020 campaign.

These are not normal circumstances and as we learned within the last couple of weeks, the Big Ten will not be playing against non-conference opponents, so scratch Bowling Green, Oregon and Buffalo off your Ohio State schedules and just wait to see what might be in store as the B1G braintrust is hard at work looking to reshape schedules and try and put policies in place to make this season as safe as possible.

That does not mean there won't be risks. Football inherently is a dangerous game to begin with but the nature of the sport and the close proximity that 22 players at a time spend around one another makes it a dangerous proposition.

There are so many unknowns at this point and time is not the ally of anyone at this point, at least in terms of getting the season to start in early September. But the alternatives sound much worse, either a shortened spring season or not having one at all.

In this week's edition of the 3-2-1 brought to you by our friends at Hague Water Conditioning, we widen the scope a little bit and talk about the professional leagues that are either already back in action or about there. What might a Big Ten season look like once the league ADs come to a decision? We ask a few questions there. And high school football may be played in some states and not in others. What does that mean?

1 - Several pro leagues are here/close

NASCAR came back in mid-May, the MLS tournament started earlier this month.

Major League Baseball returns later this week, the NBA plays meaningful games on July 30th, the NHL games count on August 1st.

Sure, outside of NASCAR, there are no fans at any of these events and it is quite odd hearing artificial crowd noise piped in on telecasts.

But dammit, we have sports, at least in some variety.

The MLS, NHL, and NBA are all instituting a "bubble" where its competitors enter and are mandated to remain in place, keeping them out of the general population of society as the world still struggles in terms of coming to terms with how best to address the COVID-19 issue.

MLB is currently in a bubble but that will change as teams will travel once the regular season starts. But even that is not exactly straight forward as the Toronto Blue Jays will not play in Canada this year as they could not get clearance from the Canadian government to travel to-and-from the United States as part of the 60-game season.

NASCAR has been competing the longest out of the American sports leagues and is still going from track to track, but even early on was doing double-dips at certain tracks just to limit some of the travel.

Football fans are hoping that the launch of MLB, NBA and NHL all go smoothly, showing that sports can work under current conditions, even if it is an imperfect situation.

Not every situation will be an apples-to-apples comparison however. Hockey and basketball have about half the players on the ice or court that football has on the field at any given time. Baseball is a game that is build for a good amount of social distancing outside of the interaction at home plate with a batter, catcher and umpire all in a relatively small space. Soccer may have 11 players per team on the pitch at a time, but it too is a game that has a natural spacing of players across the field of play.

But this all provides hope for football as we will see three leagues all move forward within a week-plus window of time. Each league will have its own protocols in place and we will have a chance to see what is working and what needs to be tweaked.

Just because something works in baseball does not mean it would work with hockey or if something works in the MLS does not mean that the NFL or NCAA could easily implement it.

Though it does give us some real world experiences to see what can and cannot be done at this time and if you are a fan of football, even if you don't watch one or more of the leagues that are coming back, now is the time to hope and pray that they have figured a thing or two out if you want football come September.

2 - Not everyone agrees

Shifting gears to the NFL, in a pre-pandemic world, we would be just outside of two weeks away from the annual Hall of Fame game in Canton (Ohio).

Obviously, that was taken off the table months ago and the NFL is still looking to move forward but it is not without a lot of disagreement on how things should be conducted.

While the NFL struggles with the idea of playing just one preseason game along with its regular schedule or how many fans to have in the stands, there are others who have plenty of concerns while still wanting to play football this season.

On Sunday the Twitter hashtag of #WeWantToPlay made the rounds with a slew of top players going to social media voicing their desire to play but concern about plans or lack of plans.

Rookies are supposed to report to training camps this week and the remainder of teams are supposed to be in camps before the end of the month.

Will a season see fans in the stands? A full stadium? A reduced number? No fans? Las Vegas Raiders owner Mark Davis came out recently and said he is an "all or none" type of guy and sees three likely scenarios for the league with either going forward and opening camps, delaying the start of the season until November and playing a 12-game schedule or just canceling the season.

"The only way I believe [playing in a full stadium] can happen is if they delayed the start of the season rather than trying to start it right now in the middle of the uncertainty we have," Davis told the media.

"I believe we could get all the way up to November and still get a full season and playoffs and Super Bowl in, and if we went to November, we may have a better feel for what's going on with the virus with some type of inoculation or something of that nature that could give us a better feel for the safety of the players, fans and everyone else."

If the NFL ends up going in a direction to not have fans in the stands, Davis says that will include him as well. But if you asked him which direction he is leaning, it would be one without fans.

"If you asked me right now, I would say we will go with no fans in the stands," Davis told the Las Vegas Review Journal.

3 - Watching the watch lists

Season or no season, the college football award watch lists wait for no man or virus.

With the Buckeyes expected to be a top-five team at the start of the season, it should come as no surprise that players are well-represented on the watch lists of players to keep an eye on for the major college football awards going into the season.

On Monday all three Ohio State linebackers made it on the list for the Butkus award, given to the nation's top linebacker. Ohio State was the only school in the nation to place three on the list with Tuf Borland, Baron Browning and Pete Werner.

Guys like Justin Fields, Shaun Wade, Wyatt Davis and others will see their names attached to various other award watch lists.

Of course, none of this matters if we don't have a season but it does give a glimpse into just how deep the Buckeyes are this season.

1 - Will the B1G present scheduling guidelines this week?

We have already talked about this some over the past few days but if the Big Ten sticks to the loose timeline that Ohio State AD Gene Smith mentioned, could we be hearing something about a Big Ten schedule this week as he said that it would be "next week" when the conference power brokers would start to discuss this important step.

Those comments were made on the 9th, so more than a week ago.

Now, just because conversations were supposed to happen within a timeframe, that does not mean that any immediate decisions were made, especially with a target that is constantly moving and difficult to pin down.

What we do think that we know is that the target length of the season will be 10 games, spread out over a larger period of time to allow for some flexibility.

Beyond that? We don't know.

Could we see a division-less Big Ten this year? Could we see games like Ohio State versus Michigan take place early in the season to give these contests the best chances of happening? Could we see those types of games in the middle of the season?

Smith had mentioned the possibility of not announcing a full schedule at the start of the season and adding games (that likely would already be predetermined) as the season goes on, provided that it does go on?

And what will this mean for the rest of the Power Five? We already know the Pac-12 is following suit while the other three leagues are still figuring things out. Would the Big Ten coming out and naming some pillars of what the schedule will look like force the hands of the other leagues as this becomes even more official?

This could be a really big week for the 2020 season as everyone waits in anticipation to see what the conference will come up with.

2 - What about high school football?

Just as there is no true governing body over college football on a national level with each conference acting on its own under the umbrella of the NCAA, there is nothing in place for the high school associations from across the country either.

We already know that Virginia is out, that state will not be playing football in the fall. Michigan and Pennsylvania both are moving forward, provided situations don't worsen. It appears that Ohio is trying to follow that same plan as well but we have not seen any sort of declaration. California's governing body is supposed to announce on Monday and Texas may not be far off.

We could really have a scenario where 40 states play football while 10 don't play in the fall or at all. Or it could be 25 and 25. Or any variation as we just don't know what the future holds.

What does this mean for these athletes?

Ohio State commit TreVeyon Henderson is in the state of Virginia and already saw his senior season impacted. He, as well as many other bluechippers from Virginia have a choice to make. Ride it out and just not have a senior season or look to transfer elsewhere with the hope of finding a state that will actually play football in the fall.

Henderson went to social media on Sunday night to announce his plans.

Another top-player from the same state, Tony Grimes, has already announced his plans to reclassify and enroll at North Carolina this fall and be part of the class of 2020 instead of 2021.

Ohio State target Tristan Leigh will have to make a decision as well as he currently resides in Fairfax (Va.). The offensive lineman is the nation's No. 28 player. As will three other players from within the state who are part of the Rivals250.

And this situation could repeat itself if other states decide to delay or cancel their seasons. What happens if California's CIF decides it is too risky to play and delays the season until the spring, or doesn't have one at all. We won't be talking about six players in the Rivals250, the Golden State has 10 players in the Rivals100, including the nation's top player in Korey Foreman.

The next week-plus should be very telling about how the high school schedule will look in many states as we get closer to August and the time that most training camps would be opening up.

UPDATE: Shortly after publication the CIF announced that it would be moving its football season to Spring 2021. Read more about that here.

Okay, we are moving in on Joseph Hastings' realm in his weekly recruiting 3-2-1, but we were here first and will take this one.

Malaki Branham is supposed to mane an announcement this week as to where he is going to play his college basketball career and it is a state of Ohio feel with Ohio State, Cincinnati and Xavier making the list.

Look for the good guys to win this one and Chris Holtmann landing a tremendous player with the nation's No. 35 rated player coming out of a high school that is known for turning out an athlete or two.