Mike Tomlin Shows Off 12-Year Minecraft City, Complete With Boutique Hotel and Stadiums
Former Steelers coach Mike Tomlin unveiled a Minecraft city he has built for more than 12 years in a nearly 20-minute YouTube tour that drew hundreds of thousands of views.
Mike Tomlin spent 19 seasons coaching the Pittsburgh Steelers. It turns out he was also building a city. On Wednesday, the Super Bowl-winning coach published a video tour of a sprawling Minecraft world he has been developing for more than a decade.
What Tomlin built
Tomlin's map is a midsize city centered on bodies of water, according to NBC News. It has a dense urban core with sports stadiums, high-rises and a PNC Bank, plus hills and wooded suburbs. Tomlin said the project began with carving out a bay.
He narrated the tour in the same matter-of-fact tone he used at weekly news conferences. He showed a boutique hotel with an executive spa, therapy rooms and an "appropriate number of public restrooms," and a glass ceiling over its conference room. He called his design approach "lighting-conscious."
The detail goes deep. Buildings are grouped by theme and placed beside rivers, bays and lakes. Residential towers have different penthouse floor plans from the lower floors, and kitchens have islands.
Why Minecraft, and why now
Tomlin said he became curious about the game after watching his kids play it obsessively in middle school. He was drawn to creative mode, which gives players unlimited resources to build with. He says he has always been interested in architecture, high-rise buildings and urban planning.
It also became a way to spend time with his children, and each of them has buildings in the city. As they got older and left for high school and college, their interest faded. "My participation probably at times increased," Tomlin said, laughing.
He described the building as a way to unwind. "I'm not a big TV watcher," he said. "It allowed me to detach from the realities and the pressures of life."
How the hobby went public
NBC News reports that the hobby first became public about three weeks earlier. Tomlin mentioned it in an interview with Craig Melvin as his first season as an NBC "Sunday Night Football" broadcaster began. The 54-year-old stepped down as Steelers coach in January after 19 consecutive winning seasons.
The YouTube tour followed. NBC says it was viewed more than 334,000 times in four hours, and that total doubled by the next morning.
The reaction
Some online commenters questioned how much time he spent building while working in the NFL's workaholic culture. Former Steelers running back Le'Veon Bell wrote that players were trying to win Super Bowls while "coach T was on minecraft building cities."
Most reaction focused on how realistic the city is. One YouTube commenter said they never expected to watch Tomlin discuss lighting and basement speakeasies. A Reddit user said they did not expect such an impressive city.
Minecraft, released in 2009, is the bestselling video game of all time. Microsoft said in 2024 that it had sold more than 300 million copies.
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What happens next
Tomlin described the project as ongoing, and NBC says he revealed only part of the map. For now, the full video is on his YouTube channel, and he is also working as an NBC "Sunday Night Football" broadcaster this season.
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