As coach of one of the NFL’s most successful franchises, the Pittsburgh Steelers, for nearly two decades, Mike Tomlin was charged with building championship-caliber teams. In his spare time, Tomlin was building something different: an elaborate cityscape in the video game “Minecraft.” On his YouTube channel on Wednesday, Tomlin revealed part of that map, which he said he had been working on for more than 12 years. Within four hours, the episode had been viewed more than 334,000 times. By the next morning, that total had doubled. “I’ve always been interested in architecture and stuff,” Tomlin said in the video, which has racked up more than 900,000 views. “And so I began to build this creative city.” Tomlin may have been perfecting the map for more than a decade, but his hobby had become public only three weeks earlier. The 54-year-old resigned as coach of the Steelers in January after 19 consecutive winning seasons, which included a Super Bowl victory. As he began his debut season as host of NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” last month, Tomlin revealed in an interview with Craig Melvin that his passions did, in fact, extend beyond football. Watching his then-young children spend hours playing “Minecraft” inspired him to see what all the fuss was about. As they became teenagers and went to college, their interest waned. However, Tomlin’s is not. “More than anything, it was therapeutic for me,” Tomlin said. “So, mindless entertainment. I’m not a big TV watcher. It allowed me to detach myself from the realities and pressures of life.” With the Steelers, Tomlin was known for unique sayings known as “Tomlinisms.” In 2020, he became famous for not allowing Covid restrictions to be used as a hardship, saying: “We don’t care.” So it surprised some football fans last month to hear that what Tomlin privately cared so much about was a video game immensely popular among elementary school kids. Since its creation in 2009, “Minecraft” has become the best-selling game of all time, with more than 300 million copies sold, Microsoft said in 2024, and has since spawned a popular movie. “Minecraft,” an open-world “sandbox” game, allows users to build whatever their creativity desires using a variety of materials, from different types of stone and wood to more. Some players build fantasy worlds where building physics does not apply. Players often build on multiple maps. Tomlin limited himself to one, however, preferring to build what appears to be a medium-sized city centered on bodies of water and with a dense urban core that includes sports stadiums, skyscrapers and a PNC bank. The map showed hills and forested suburbs. In other words, not so different from…Pittsburgh. Narrating his tour with matter-of-fact delivery not out of place from his previous weekly press conferences, Tomlin used verbiage that a real estate developer would approve of as he said his entire map began by creating a bay. He then built a boutique hotel, with an executive spa, therapy rooms and an “adequate number of public bathrooms.” Showcasing a glass ceiling over the hotel’s conference room, Tomlin called his design philosophy “lighting conscious.” 00:23 Mike Tomlin says he’s been working on a city in ‘Minecraft’ 00:0000:00 Some online commenters asked how much time Tomlin had spent building while also working in the NFL, an industry known for its workaholic culture. Former Steelers running back Le’Veon Bell wrote: “We were trying to win Super Bowls and Coach T was on Minecraft building cities 😭.” Furthermore, the reaction tended to focus on Tomlin’s dedication to realism. “I never thought I’d see Mike Tomlin talk about lighting and basement speakeasies,” said one YouTube commenter. In a Reddit thread dedicated to Tomlin’s construction, one person wrote, “When Mike Tomlin first mentioned all this, I was NOT expecting such an impressive city!” Tomlin built buildings by theme, intentionally placing them next to rivers, bays and lakes that he carved on the map. Their designs are intricate; Residential buildings included different floor plans for the attic than for the lower floors. The kitchens featured islands. The bathrooms featured plants. The bedrooms included paintings. Living spaces in a skyscraper, which was down the street from buildings called “CVS” and “7-Eleven,” surrounded a central aquarium. There were professional football and baseball stadiums nearby. At one point, Tomlin admitted to being “obsessed with rooftop penthouses” with great views. That approach then extended to designing spaces for indoor and outdoor entertaining, balconies, home offices, and his-and-her bathroom concepts. “Find someone who loves you like Coach Tomlin loves Jack & Jill’s bathroom,” another YouTube commenter said. It was one of many jokes sparked by Tomlin’s devotion to “Minecraft.” However, perhaps it shouldn’t have been so surprising. In “Minecraft,” Tomlin seems to have found similarities with the mix of creativity and discipline required in the world of the NFL. Coaches’ lives are governed by a rigid structure of practices, games and the off-season schedule. They conceive exotic play designs and defensive coverages, then put them into practice, obsessing over detail and precision. “Football is an emotional game played by high-energy men who are really emotional,” Tomlin said in 2022. “They need to hear a strong voice. They need to hear consistency in messages with faith, and so my job is to exemplify that.”Former Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin.Getty; MinecraftTomlin was praised as a trainer for his personality that was never too high or too low. The kind of guy whose idea of relaxing after a long day in the spotlight might include making sure his “Minecraft” map has a “certain density,” as he put it. When Tomlin dropped his son Dino off at college, he said he was inspired to recreate the look of off-campus housing in his own city. “Bro, I used to come home sometimes and my PlayStation just wasn’t there anymore,” one of Tomlin’s sons, Mason, posted on X. “And I wasn’t in trouble.” At one point during Tomlin’s tour, he focused on a tall beige building labeled “Trump Tower.” “It’s not an endorsement,” a chyron said in the video. “This build is (around) 2015… We didn’t think it would win. Twice.” Their penthouse had an “amazing open floor plan,” Tomlin said approvingly. He promised more episodes to his approximately 76,000 YouTube subscribers. “At some point I will give you a tour of this aquarium,” he said. “It’s crazy.”
