Which sport would be most improved by happening on water?

The NFL Draft is happening on water. What other sports can we improve?

It was revealed Tuesday that the 2020 NFL Draft in Las Vegas will be the first to take place on water — yes, you read that correctly.

This is one of the most beautiful additions to a sporting event we’ve seen in a long time. Let’s face it, the NFL Draft can be extremely tedious when your team isn’t picking. You need to be in entirely too deep to get joy from watching each and every selection. All that changes with the addition of water, and boats, and pageantry. Now I’m excited to see all the possibilities of players being ferried to the stage by boat. Will there be a mishap? Will someone fall off a boat? Will a vigorous hug dislodge Roger Goodell from the stage causing him to crash into the water? The mind races.

Realizing how much better the NFL Draft will be with the addition of water, we got thinking on which other sporting events could be improved with a little H2O.

Badminton

Badminton is already a good and fun sport on land, and the variety of shots that can be made are entertaining. Will some of those be taken away because of the water, and between-the-legs shot be gone? Yes.

However, the ability to dive with zero concern for your landing spot would make for some incredible back-and-forths that I think everyone would enjoy. This would essentially be badminton’s version of tennis being played on different surfaces like grass, clay, and hard courts.

— Harry Lyles Jr.

Slam dunk contest

Imagine putting a basket on one end of the water. Raise it to like 15 feet or something. Twenty feet is fine. That part’s not important. Just make it higher than 10 feet.

Then, build a barge with two springboard diving platforms at two different heights: one meter (just over three feet) and three meters (nearly 10 feet). Give dunkers the option to move the barge wherever they please and choose which of the two platforms they want to use. Toss them a basketball, allow them to walk up to the springboard, and let them do whatever dunk they please while landing in a pool of water. Keep the same subjective judging, keep props if you want, keep those teammate dunks if you want.

It’s like those trampoline dunkers you see during timeouts, except cooler.

— Mike Prada

Fergie’s National Anthem

Same anthem. Same performer. Same tone. Same instant classic. But on water. It’s genius.

— Matt Ellentuck

Polo

Look, I know water polo exists already but that’s not what I’m talking about. I want a full game of polo, horses and all, in a pool. You can lead a horse to water, but cant you make sure it doesn’t sink? That’s the primary question Polo on Water seeks to answer.

Just a bunch of preppy frat kids on horses their parents bought them trying to navigate choppy waters aided by the power of a wave machine. Still water does nothing for me — I want these horses scared and aggressive, constantly fearing for their safety as they try to buck off their riders in a flesh melee the likes of which the sporting world has never seen.

I’ll allow the ball to float for the sake of actually making the game playable, but I want the mallets to weigh at LEAST seven times the amount. I want the players to be unable to lift their equipment the same way a mortal struggles to move Thor’s hammer.

Tell me this wouldn’t be the perfect sport. You would watch. I would watch. We would all watch. It’s distilled schadenfreude. I love it.

— James Dator