A Snitch Floor

With a ten minute seeker floor, surprisingly 25% of pool play games at World Cup VI only lasted 10-15 minutes. The snitches were coming back to the pitch almost immediately after the seeker floor ended in some games. Snitches coming back too early (Too early for me is before the 15 minute mark) has great consequences on teams. In the games that lasted fewer than 15 minutes, 62% of them were within snitch range before the snitch was caught. For instance, Villanova's 60*-50 loss to Central Michigan was only 13 minutes and 32 seconds.

That being said, the rest of the short games were mainly blowouts. I am all in favor of snitches coming back quickly in blowouts. Blowouts are no fun to watch and they skew point differential unfairly. To end having long blowouts and short close games, I propose having varying set times for snitches to "come back" to the field. I put come back in quotations because the snitch would never leave the field. There would be a snitch floor. Depending on the score, the snitch floor would end at certain times during pool play at major tournaments.

If after ten minutes, the point differential is over 60 points, the snitch floor would end immediately. The snitch would run onto the pitch and so would the seekers. If after ten minutes, the point differential is not over 60 points, the snitch floor would end in five more minutes at the fifteen minute mark. I choose over 60 points because any point differential above 60 is more than twice out of snitch range.

Off pitch seeking and "the snitch is loose!" would be gone. The seeker floor would be the same length as the snitch floor at each game. With quidditch growing more competitive, off-pitch seeking/snitchery just has too many variables. With a longer seeker floor, the IQA is already trying to eliminate off-pitch seeking. The majority of games would be over 15 minutes and teams could prepare strategies to prevent quick snatches. A lot of the time, when the snitch comes on the field, chaos breaks loose, the beaters aren't ready and the snitch is caught quickly. That's no fun for spectators or players. Overall, snitch floor eliminates short games, lopsided blowouts, questionable off-pitch seeking/snitchery and the chaos with an unexpectedsnitchappearing on the field. All of these are steps that quidditch should and can take to become more legitimate.

What do you think?