Former Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin has revealed a 12-year-long project in Minecraft, the world-building game, showcasing a sprawling virtual city filled with stadiums, skyscrapers, and bespoke homes. The video, released on Wednesday, offers a detailed tour of a project Tomlin described as therapeutic.
A Therapeutic Escape
“More than anything, it was therapeutic for me,” Tomlin says at the video’s outset. The coach took up Minecraft city-building as a way to connect with his young children during his coaching career. The project spanned a tumultuous period in Steelers history, including star tailback Le’Veon Bell’s 2018 franchise tag holdout and Antonio Brown’s eventual trade to the Raiders.
Despite Tomlin calling the experience “mindless entertainment,” the city is anything but. It is built around a central body of water, similar to Pittsburgh, where three rivers meet at Point State Park. “This is kind of where it all started, around this body of water,” Tomlin says. “I thought it was appropriate to just give you that perspective of where I wanted to get started from.”
Painstaking Details
The tour begins with the first building Tomlin constructed, around 2014, a “boutique hotel” with an executive spa and therapy rooms. He also shows a multipurpose conference room with tall windows and a glass roof. “I was very lighting conscious,” Tomlin says. “You’ll consciously see me do things with glass ceilings where appropriate.”
Tomlin breezes past a virtual CVS and into an aquarium-themed apartment highrise, explaining, “I did it because it was across the street from the aquarium that I built in the city.” He promises the aquarium will appear in a future episode and will be “crazy.” His son and producer Dino, a former college wide receiver, notes that it took considerable time to get the water situated. “That was a nightmare,” Mike says.
A City for Everyone
Tomlin was “fixated” on bedroom details and built an MLS stadium and a baseball field that fits neatly into the cityscape, similar to Pittsburgh’s PNC Park. He takes special pleasure in a highrise with a good view of the ballpark. “View-conscious” Tomlin also ensured an “appropriate number of public restrooms” in office and multipurpose spaces.
Family touches include a collegiate apartment complex called “The View,” sharing a name with a complex in College Park, Maryland, where Dino began his college career. The overarching response to Tomlin’s build has been adulation, with many finding it refreshing that a 54-year-old in a high-pressure job would develop such a creative hobby.
