Michigan State has promoted Christian Pawola to assistant defensive backs coach, sources tell Spartans Illustrated.
He previously served as a graduate student defensive coach, working with the Spartans' defensive backs in 2024, primarily the cornerbacks.
Pawola has been with the Spartans since January 2024. Before that, he spent time at Minnesota with current Michigan State defensive coordinator/linebackers coach Joe Rossi.
With the Golden Gophers, he was a defensive student assistant coach (2019 and 2020) and a defensive graduate coach (2022 and 2023). Pawola spent one season as the linebackers coach at Thiel College (Division III) in 2021.
With some added responsibility in 2025, Pawola will work under Rossi, secondary coach Blue Adams and newly-hired safeties coach James Adams.
Pawola played football in high school and graduated from Minnesota in 2020 with a degree in marketing.
The promotion of Pawola comes after Michigan State has made several moves to its coaching staff. Head coach Jonathan Smith recently hired Jon Boyer as the quarterbacks coach and James Adams as the safeties coach. Notably, cornerbacks coach Demetrice Martin left Michigan State to go to UCLA.
Smith also promoted offensive analyst Aaron Pflugrad to passing game coordinator, defensive graduate assistant coach Antjuan Simmons to assistant defensive line coach, defensive analyst Andrew Bindelglass to assistant linebackers coach, graduate assistant Jacob Lail to assistant offensive line coach and special teams analyst Joe Begnal to assistant special teams coordinator.
The new, larger coaching staff comes after a recent rule change in June of 2024 by the Division I Council, which removed restrictions regarding countable coaches. Now, any staff member may provide technical and tactical instruction to student-athletes during practice and competition. Prior to the rule change, schools were only permitted to have 11 on-field coaches. With Pawola’s promotion, MSU currently has 17 known on-field coaches for the 2025 season.
However, the NCAA still limits how many staff members are allowed to recruit off campus, and that number is 11.