When the 2012 Big 12 football schedule was released Tuesday, two new squads joined the conference slate as West Virginia and Texas Christian University will become members nine and 10 of the restructured conference.

Seeing the Mountaineers and Horned Frogs finally on Iowa State’s schedule is a quick reminder that the Cyclones will face two more offenses that finished in the top 30 in total offense nationally last season after seeing six of the top 30 in 2011.

The Cyclones, who have not finished higher than 60th nationally in total offense since 2009, will begin a new era on the offensive side of the ball as Courtney Messingham takes over as offensive coordinator for Tom Herman who took the same job at Ohio State in December.

The first glimpse for fans of Messingham’s offensive system will not come until the April 14 spring game, but the Waterloo-native and the rest of the offensive staff is hard at work abbreviating a playbook that grew lengthy near the end of 2011.

“If you can do less better, you’re a better football team, and I think simply stated that’s what we’ll look at doing,” said ISU coach Paul Rhoads in January.

A 22-year coaching veteran, Messingham brings an array of different schemes to the table as he prepares for his first season as an offensive coordinator since 2002. As a quarterback in high school and at Northern Iowa, Messingham often attempted fewer than 10 passes in a game in run-heavy systems.

But, in his second stint at Missouri State from 2008-2009 Messingham coached under former ISU associate head coach Terry Allen in a zone-read spread system similar to the one Herman implemented.

Messingham said in January that the offensive scheme would not have “huge changes,” but that the running game will be important especially in packages where the quarterback is under center. The term “under center” was rare to see in Herman’s system but Messingham will implement packages that will position the field general at the line of scrimmage.

The new offensive coordinator understands that finding points was not easy for the ISU offense over the last three seasons, and often the Cyclones got just enough to pull off a win. Of the Cyclones’ 18 wins since 2009, nine were won by seven or fewer points.

“We’re a team-oriented program, and if we’ve got to score 50 points to win a football game we need to go out score 50,” Messingham said. “If we win 10-7 and we’ve taken care of the football and used the clock when we needed to then that’s what we need to do.”

Spring practice for the Cyclones begins on March 24 and will conclude with the annual Spring Game scheduled for 2 p.m. on April 14 at Jack Trice Stadium.