Nicole Auerbach

USA TODAY Sports

INDIANAPOLIS — The first set of College Football Playoff rankings, which were released on Oct. 28, brought such buzz that some in the sports media compared it to Christmas. And it hasn't waned since.

The Division I men's basketball committee is paying attention.

That committee, which is tasked with selecting, seeding and bracketing the 68-team NCAA tournament, doesn't reveal a bracket prior to Selection Sunday.

But after seeing the way the Playoff rankings are being received, the hoops committee is considering unveiling some early information of its own. The basketball committee met here last week primarily to select sites for future tournaments, but the topic of early looks at potential seeds also came up.

"We did talk about it and certainly have been monitoring what the football committee has been doing," Dan Gavitt, the NCAA vice president of men's basketball championships, told USA TODAY Sports. "Even going back to last year, before football started doing what they're doing, we had some ideas of possibly taking more steps with what I think has been a real good effort over the years in transparency in the process — additional things we could do in that regard, but also possibly take advantage, as the football committee has, of the promotional/marketing value of that as well.

"It's tricky because you've got to make sure to balance those two things. There's the integrity of the process that needs to be maintained."

Gavitt said, if the men's basketball committee were to release information ahead of Selection Sunday, it would not be a full bracket.

"There was some discussion of four (one seeds) or sixteen (total seeds), the top four seeds in the four regions," he said. "The way the committee left it was, we'll discuss it again (at meetings) in January. There wasn't enough time to fully vet it. But I'd say there's certainly some consideration being given to it."

Whether or not you agree with the concept of evaluating and ranking teams with incomplete résumés — and making that information public — it's undeniable the weekly rankings reveal on ESPN has become appointment TV for college football fans.

If there is a basketball seeding reveal, it could happen as soon as this season. Because the idea is still in a theoretical stage, Gavitt said he hasn't talked to the tournament's television partners, CBS/Turner, and didn't suggest a specific time frame for the release. It would make sense to wait until at least half of conference play has finished, suggesting a February release.

"Until you've got a body of work that's nearing completion at least, it'd be premature," Gavitt said. "I don't think it'd be fair to the teams. … So much can happen in the last few weeks of the season, conference tournaments aside — although those can have a major impact, too — but just even the last two or three weeks can have such a huge bearing on quality road wins, injuries that can happen.

"It would be later in the season."

Still, for a sport that struggles with visibility prior to March, this would be a way to garner some attention heading into the final stretch of the regular season.

The transparency of releasing top seed lines, too, would help avoid situations like last season, when Louisville receiving a No. 4 seed prompted outrage from fans, media and the team itself because the Cardinals thought their body of work would merit a better seed.

"Some of the reaction the last couple of years of teams being surprised where they were seeded … that's where the thought process started for me," Gavitt said. "Are there things we can do that would better communicate what's the likeliness? Frankly, I didn't think there were a whole lot of very different seeds going in. There seemed to be consternation. If you were to do something along the way to be more transparent, maybe there would be a better understanding — maybe not acceptance — but an understanding that this didn't come out of left field."

Gavitt voiced concerns about the shifting that could happen in between an early release and the final bracket. Teams' résumés will change, and teams could move up or down multiple seed lines. He also mentioned the possibility of backlash/public reaction to an early release, but felt the committee's existing system of assigning conference monitors would eliminate any potential bias.

In short, there seems to be quite a bit of upside to doing something like this.

"There's not any commitment to doing anything right now," Gavitt said. "But we're open to considering it."