The 12 members of the College Football Playoff selection com-mittee left the Thundering Herd out of its rankings, but Marshall University is looking to the Los Angeles public relations firm Conference USA hired to bring attention to its season.

Steve Brener, president of Brener, Zwikel & Associates, said he has firm hopes to maximize the visibility of the Herd nationally.

“We aim to publicize the team and their success, so that the 12 members of the voting committee will be well informed and aware of their success this year,” Brener said. “In the end, it will be up to the 12 members to decide the four best teams in the nation.”

Brener said his team is going to do national radio shows and satellite television tours to get the message out to the public. His firm is also sending information about the Herd’s football team to contacts across the country.

The PR firm sent an email to the media highlighting certain statistics, notes and facts about the football team Monday. The email also included the individual statistics of senior quarterback Rakeem Cato and junior running back Devon Johnson.

Courtney Morrison-Archer, C-USA’s associate commissioner, said it is not uncommon for the conference to work with an outside consultant agency, especially since it wants to bring at-tention to Marshall’s campaign.

“In this instance, we felt the story of Marshall football was a great one to tell,” Morrison-Archer said. “Why not do what we could to tell it the best and most effective way possible?”

C-USA also hired a public relations firm to bring attention to the conference. Jason Corriher, Marshall’s football sports in-formation director, told USA Today the conference is using the Herd’s success for publicity.

“We’re the ones that they’ve used to pursue some publicity for the league because of our national ranking,” Corriher said. “It helped our cause and our league.”

Lachel House can be contacted at [email protected]