The Missouri State University football coaching staff is complete for the 2008 season with the addition of one newcomer and one coach who makes his return to the school for the staff of Bears’ head coach Terry Allen.

Assistant coach Bob Montgomery will coach the Bears’ tight ends and Courtney Messingham begins his second tour on the Missouri State staff and will work with the Bears’ receivers. Montgomery has joined the staff and Messingham is due to join April 1.

Montgomery replaces former offensive line coach Chris Kapilovic who left the Missouri State program in December after two seasons on the staff to become the offensive line coach at Southern Mississippi. Messingham takes over for Andy Follett who departed to take over the receivers at Western Carolina after four seasons at Missouri State.

In the reworked staff assignments for 2008, offensive coordinator Rob Christophel will continue to coach the quarterbacks while assistant Sean Coughlin will take over the offensive line and Mike Hunter will again coach the running backs.

Montgomery comes to Missouri State after having spent the past three seasons as offensive line coach and run game coordinator at Bryant University in Smithfield, R.I., working as associate head coach during the 2007 campaign.

Over that three-year period, Bryant averaged 390.3 yards a game, including more than 200 yards a game rushing. The Bulldogs of head coach Marty Fine won Northeast 10 Conference championships and advanced to the NCAA Division II playoffs in both the 2006 and 2007 seasons. Montgomery also worked as the Bulldogs’ video coordinator and the program’s strength and conditioning coordinator.

A 2004 exercise sports medicine graduate of Iowa State University where he was on the Dean’s List in six semesters, Montgomery was a four-year letterman and three-year offensive line starter for the ISU Cyclones. With Dan McCarney the Cyclones’ head coach during his time at ISU and with Allen serving as an assistant coach part of the time, Montgomery was a Big 12 Conference academic all-league selection four times and an all-Big 12 pick as a senior. He received the ISU Scholar-Athlete Award four times and was the football team captain as a senior. Montgomery was an assistant football coach at Ames (Iowa) High School in 2004-05.

Messingham returns to Springfield and Missouri State after three years at Southern Mississippi. That stint included two years as receivers coach after a season as running backs coach and recruiting coordinator. Messingham went to Southern Miss in 2005 after two seasons as head coach at Upper Iowa University. Messingham was on coach Randy Ball’s Missouri State staff from 1999 to 2002 with one season as receivers coach and two years as offensive coordinator. He came to MSU the first time after four seasons as an assistant coach at Truman State. He was head football coach at Iowa Lakes Community College from 1993 to 1995 and offensive coordinator at St. Ambrose University from 1990 to 1992.

The 2008 season will be Allen’s third year at Missouri State. The 2006 Bears posted a 2-9 record and made the program’s biggest jump in wins from one season to the next in 19 years as they logged a winning campaign at 6-5 in 2007. The Bears averaged 34 points a game last fall for the highest scoring average a Missouri State team has ever had for an 11-game season. The Bears were tied for fifth in the Gateway Football Conference.