A few weeks ago, the words “Mike Tomlin” and “urban architecture” would have made no sense together in a sentence. But then Tomlin sat with Craig Melvin for an interview on the Today show and mentioned that he has a long-running hobby.
“I started playing Minecraft, man, when my kids were young,” Tomlin said. “I have a Minecraft city … that I’ve been working on for like 12 years.”
Minecraft is a 3D “sandbox” video game where users construct worlds of their own design out of blocks. Maybe you knew that, but I needed the refresher—a look at someone’s honest humanity will take you places you never thought you’d go! Anyway, the off-hand admission that the former Steelers head coach-turned-NBC broadcaster, who cuts the image of a myopic football obsessive, had been building his own personal urban utopia for over a decade was tantalizing to fans, who began clamoring for a tour via social media. Since the interview last month, Tomlin’s son Dino has been teasing a big reveal on YouTube, the first installment of which—covering “ROOFTOPS, PENTHOUSES, AND URBAN LIVING,” dropped on Wednesday.
And … oh my god???! It is so intricate! There are so many aquariums! There is something called an “executive spa”?!! Over nearly 20 minutes, Tomlin matter-of-factly explains the design and planning that went into some of the more densely populated neighborhoods of his downtown. Like any good hobbyist, he is idiosyncratic, obsessive and entirely sincere. He is saying things like “I was really lighting-conscious” and “I got into Jack-and-Jill bedroom concepts.”
Tomlin always struck me as a cipher, someone who’s obviously compelling behind the scenes, but was insistent on hiding behind “the standard is the standard” platitudes, so this is one of the most unexpectedly revealing moments I can recall from an NFL coach, retired or otherwise. Enthusiasm is a beautiful thing to witness! As of Thursday evening, the video has over 1 million views and is the top trending gaming video on YouTube.
Something that’s quickly evident from the video is that Tomlin had a plan. He didn’t just start stacking blocks to see what happens, he had a vision and worked to execute it. And that vision started with water features, baby! Tomlandia (not his city’s name, though he’s welcome to it) was built along the banks of a river, perhaps inspired in part by Pittsburgh, though there is also a central neighborhood around a bay.
“I wanted to build around bodies of water,” he says, one of several times he emphasizes this point. To do so, he had to learn how to alter topography within the game, which was a challenge. “I’d have to blow up mountains and hills and so forth and redevelop land around it,” he said. “But again, it was about this body of water, this river that ran through here, and I just wanted to line it with cool residences.” Hell yeah, man.
And that is what he did. Early in the video, Tomlin leads a tour through the first building he constructed on the waterfront, which he describes as a “boutique hotel.” There’s the “executive spa” off of the lobby, and what he says is a “realistic” number of public bathrooms. For a little bit of flair, there’s a speakeasy in the basement.
In the hotel, Tomlin made lighting a top priority. He installed big windows and skylights—not necessarily as design features but because he wanted his spaces to be bright. He also makes ample use of sconces and a material called “glowstone,” which is what it sounds like—again, not because he liked the way it looked, but because of what it did for the atmosphere of the room. It has taken me six apartments to recognize that you have to start with lighting because you’ll never like anything you do to decorate if the space is poorly lit. Tomlin gets this!
Moving around downtown, Tomlin also walks through some of his more recent developments. There’s “The View,” a cluster of high-rises by a hillside that’s based on Dino’s college housing, and another downtown high-rise with an aquarium in every unit, placed across the street from the city’s aquarium, a tour of which is teased for a video to come. “It’s crazy,” Tomlin says. “You’ll love it.” Tomlin has built penthouse units with river views and terraces with rows of flower pots. He has opinions on the available artworks in the game. There is a baseball park and a CVS. (There don’t seem to be roads, but I think that’s how the game works???)
Even to someone who knows nothing about Minecraft, it’s obvious that this took a ton of work. It was captivating content. The Athletic’s Jeremy Guerin was impressed by the number of different materials Tomlin mixed and matched in his projects and noted that you could see Tomlin had adapted to newer updates of the game over time based on his usage of features like campfires and lantern blocks. “It’s certainly not a basic build,” Guerin wrote. “You can see his block palette adapting as the years go on.” For Defector, Luis Paez-Pumar wrote that he was wrong to initially doubt Tomlin’s “gamer credentials.” Tomlin, it’s clear, knows Block.
It’s always interesting when a Football Guy reveals any kind of interiority. Kyler Murray knows the dangers of revealing a video-game habit, and there’s a portion of the football-viewing public that celebrates an idea that coaches are single-minded robots that sleep on their office floors. Hobbies? Never heard of them, unless you count World War II history or ignoring your wife. A graphic circulated on social media Thursday about Tomlin’s failure to win a Super Bowl since his Minecraft era began. Julian Edelman posted a trollish video about beating the Steelers while Tomlin was moonlighting as a gamer.
Even former Steelers running back Le’Veon Bell took a shot at his former coach.
And on the Pat McAfee Show, former Colts coach Chuck Pagano offered some chiding bewilderment about a head coach having the time to do something so “extravagant,” while also mentioning that his own outlet is “the Peloton,” which he kept next to his desk so he could watch film while pedaling.
A lot of these comments and social media were probably in jest, but for the part that isn’t, the idea that you could look at someone exercising their own creativity and consider it a waste of time is so foreign to me. Tomlin wanted to bond with his children (and not in the typical football nepotism way) and wound up discovering a passion. It’s so wholesome! And in the revelation of his detail-orientation and the focused planning of Tomlin’s city, there’s a glimpse at who he might have been as a game planner. He also said that the pastime has been "therapeutic.” For years, Tomlin managed to handle the egos of players like Antonio Brown, Bell, and Ben Roethlisberger without letting them destroy the ecosystem of the team or drive him completely nuts.
What’s wrong with a man unwinding through a little virtual urban planning? “It allowed me to detach from the realities and pressures of life,” Tomlin said. Should we all be so lucky! See you next time for the aquarium tour.
