I would like to take the time now to present part 1 of my comparison of the International Quidditch Association and the International Confederation of Broomstick Athletes. These posts will be a look at some of the pros and cons of both organizations. While it is kind of obvious that I am “pro” IQA I want to be fair and present the positives and negatives of both. This is solely my opinion and is based off of obsessing on the internet and little to no rest. Starting with the ICBA…I think it’s time for the list.
The negative aspects of the ICBA:
- The ICBA currently has multiple conferences- When the announcement was originally made a lot of the ICBA supporters cited the success of the Florida Quidditch Conference. After all the FQC has its own dues, governing board (with a congress I believe), rankings, and website (including all sorts of social media outlets). One could certainly draw the parallels to the two organizations. On the surface they do look alike but they have one fundamental difference, multiple conferences. The ICBA currently has 4 conferences spanning 2 regions (the southwest and midwest). The organization has approximately 25 teams registered according to the website which is known to be inaccurate (based off of statements made by ICBA officials on the facebook page). Essentially its starting to take hold in the two regions mentioned above. “Why is this a problem?” you may ask, “more teams = more quidditch = a good thing!”. The problem is that most, if not all, ICBA teams are currently ALL still IQA teams and because the ICBA has taken it upon themselves to change sections of the rulebook confusion between the two organizations (IQA and ICBA) will be detrimental to the sport as a whole. I think the ICBA would be a whole lot simpler and less of a headache if it renamed itself and stayed in the Southwest.
- The ICBA is literally changing how the sport is played - According to the ICBA website their goals include this gem, “Consistent rules that aim to minimize vagueness and that will not change significantly from year to year that CAN(not MUST) be used in Conferences and at ICBA hosted tournaments.” So let me get this straight. The ICBA will change the rules to fit how they want to play the game, have standardized snitches and referees, and then not even require everyone to follow said rules? I don’t understand this. How is this a good idea? What are you changing? Has it ever been considered that ICBA teams will have a difficult time changing strategy and demeanor when they happen to play an IQA official game? Officials have insisted that the rules they are changing won’t be significant enough to make a huge effect…then why change them at all? AND if you’re not even fully enforcing these new/changed rules why would you even propose them as “official ICBA” rules? It just doesn’t seem that the officials of this organization have really thought this out.
- The ICBA serves no purpose - After I attended World Cup V I was upset to say the least. No food (that wasn’t preceded by a 2 hour line), no water, spotty refs (my team almost never had a beater ref), and even worse scorekeepers/scoreboards. Let alone the bracket debacle and the refs completely missing a crucial call in the finals (the refs in attendance have apologized and it was totally something that could have happened to any ref which i’m sure the ref development team has noted and will improve on =D). I was very vocal about my disappointment with WCV and a lot of people thought I was originally with the ICBA. But instead of splintering off into another organization I decided to work my butt off to try and improve the IQA in any way I could. In the past 6 months the IQA has had time to address the problems presented by the ICBA and I think they are or are in process of improving. Let’s go through some of what the ICBA have stated as major issues and see if the IQA has/will improved on it: “Standardized snitches and referees”, the IQA now has referee and snitch training planned across the country with the structure for a dynamic database and will be implemented starting in July; “Consistent rules…[as quoted in point #2]”, rules council still exists AND major rule changes are now fully being voted on by Official Member captains (Gender Rule anyone?); “Transparent rankings”, I don’t think you can get any more transparent than an open source algorithm that includes every facet of the game (not just wins/losses and point differential) and a comprehensive explanation of said algorithm; “Priority in providing for athletic needs such as water”, multiple people involved in WCVI (tournament director, gameplay director, and the team communications director) have all come out and said that it is an absolute priority to ensure that all needs of quidditch athletes will be met. On top of addressing those specific issues the IQA is close to finishing a membership package that i’m sure will knock the socks off of any quidditch team, is still expanding the sport to new teams around the world every day, and has expanded the volunteer base exponentially to accommodate the requests of every player, captain, and fan. In lieu of all of that I don’t see the point for the ICBA to exist. All it is doing now is taking teams (in the sense of teams being in both organizations) from the IQA and for what? To be more competitive? There are few official member IQA teams that are in it for the “lulz” and even if they are silly sometimes they still play at a high level (i’m looking at you Vassar ;D). When you get down to it this whole situation just doesn’t make any sense.
Before anyone blows up please wait for the rest of this series to finish (there are 3 more parts). Also this is 100% my opinion and i’m not trying to start a war with either organization. I’m just a quidkid with a lot of feels. Also just for reference all quoted lines come directly from the ICBA website www.broomstickathletes.org
This is a really good post. (Even though white on bright blue made my eyes bleed. :/ But you can’t have everything. Good content trumps the colour scheme.)
