Minecraft has become an unlikely star of American football. Mike Tomlin, longtime head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers, dropped the first episode of a series on October 1, 2026, showing off a city he has been building in Creative mode for the past 12 years. The video, titled "EP 1: ROOFTOPS, PENTHOUSES, AND URBAN LIVING" on his YouTube channel @miket757, runs nearly 20 minutes and came close to a million views within a few days.

From playing with the kids to therapy

Tomlin started building the city in 2014, when his kids were still little. The project has survived three console generations: it began on PlayStation 3, moved through PS4, and is now going on PS5. "My kids, they've taken it from PS3 to PS4 to PS5. They're into preserving it," the coach said, describing how his children kept the builds safe through each world migration.

Over time the hobby changed. Tomlin described it as a way to "detach from the realities and the pressures of life." He said this in an interview with Craig Melvin on NBC's Today show, where he revealed his passion to a wider audience before the video even premiered.

What viewers saw

The first episode focused on urban architecture: rooftops, penthouses, and life in high-rise buildings. The buildings shown included replicas of real brands and places, such as a PNC bank branch, a CVS store, and a tower modeled on Trump Tower, built before 2016. Tomlin joked about that last one: "We didn't think he would win. Twice."

  • Built in Creative mode, with no resource limits
  • Three generations of PlayStation consoles as the project's history
  • Carefully designed apartment interiors and public spaces
  • More episodes teased after the first one's success

The coach also admitted he uses Creative mode partly because he struggles with controller handling: "I'm a big Minecrafter. I have a Minecraft city on creative that I've been working on for like 12 years," he said, before his team decided to make the project public.

Reactions from the NFL world

The news about Tomlin's game amused former Steelers players. Le'Veon Bell, the team's former running back, jokingly tied the start of the city to Pittsburgh's lack of Super Bowl success: "we were tryna win super bowls and coach T was on minecraft building cities". Julian Edelman joined in with the jokes, referencing the 2016 AFC Championship Game, and Chuck Pagano, former Indianapolis Colts head coach, said on The Pat McAfee Show that he couldn't believe Tomlin managed to combine the hobby with running an NFL team.

Tomlin himself didn't shy away from the topic. The teaser for the video on his X account racked up over 22 million views, and his YouTube channel had gathered more than 18,000 subscribers before a single video was even published. That is a scale rarely seen for Minecraft-related content premieres, even considering how popular the game is among online creators.

Minecraft as a shared language across generations

Tomlin's story shows how deeply Minecraft has worked its way into family life for players who started out with their kids and kept going on their own. The coach said his interest began with watching his sons play obsessively back in their middle school years, and when they lost interest, he took over and kept building by himself. It's not the first time a well-known figure from sports or entertainment has admitted to a long-running private project in Minecraft that was never meant to go online.

Polish players building their own cities or neighborhoods in Minecraft Java Edition or on Bedrock Edition may recognize the pattern: a project started on a whim often turns into a years-long commitment that outlasts several generations of hardware. Tomlin has announced more episodes of the series, so viewers will still get to see what's hiding in the other parts of his city, which haven't been fully shown yet.

Sources