PHOTO BY KARL ROSER | PITTSBURGH STEELERS
Recently, Mike Tomlin has been making headlines — not for his football acumen or iconic one-liners, but for his architectural creativity.
The coach, who was with the Steelers for 19 years, revealed that he initially began playing Minecraft — an online world-building game where you can create structures — as a way to bond with his now-grown children before discovering a passion for it himself.
“I started playing Minecraft, man, when my kids were young,” Tomlin said in an interview with TODAY. When the coach’s three children were at home, the game was a way to connect and meet them at their level. It soon morphed into a personal hobby. “I have a Minecraft city, I’m creative, that I’ve been working on for like 12 years,” he told TODAY.
In September, with encouragement from his son Mayce, Tomlin began revealing that world, launching a viral video tour on YouTube.
As seen on the nearly 20-minute tour, Tomlin’s virtual real estate portfolio tends to favor waterfront condos, high-rise living and rooftop entertaining. He explains he started with a boutique hotel before adding upscale apartment buildings. He adds that he wanted to craft a dense urban landscape that focused more on apartments than single-family homes, taking viewers on a tour of several penthouse suites he’s been working on. The virtual properties boast amenities worthy of a luxury listing, including private aquariums, indoor-outdoor entertainment spaces and even an underground speakeasy.
In the video, Tomlin narrates the tour by describing his design process and the details he focused on while building. “I really got obsessed with rooftop penthouses,” he says, as he flies viewers over his creation. “Some of these buildings I built, and then I doubled back and detailed the top floors in the spirit of what we’ve been talking about,” he goes on as he points out views, outdoor kitchens and virtual villagers enjoying the party vibe.
Tomlin also takes viewers inside specific housing units.
“Here’s one of the early buildings that I built right here,” he says as he showcases a cushy, well-decorated pad. “It’s on the central bay that the city started on. This was probably the fourth building that I built, and when I first built it, obviously I didn’t have this level of detail on the rooftop penthouse. I doubled back when that became an obsession of mine.”
While Tomlin says indoor and outdoor entertainment spaces are a major focus of his builds, he also loves to fixate on interior comfort. “I always have a rec area or rec room space with various levels of detail of the interior decorating,” he says in the video.
Tomlin notes that he got into the details of choosing paintings for the walls, furniture, and even details such as books in the home offices.
When it comes to bedrooms, Tomlin experimented with layout to make the most of the available square footage. “I got into Jack-and-Jill bedroom concepts,” he narrates in his video tour as he walks viewers through two adjoining bedrooms. He describes the process of building as his design acumen grew, too. “I would detail these bedrooms out, and they would share this Jack- and-Jill bathroom with multiple sinks and so forth. That’s something that became an interest of mine.”
While Tomlin’s city is fictional, Yinzers can’t help but notice how the homes and public spaces Tomlin created mirror the river life valued by Pittsburghers. Tomlin noted that himself when giving viewers the tour.
“I always would get fixated on bodies of water, and so I just wanted to have some high-end residences running along this river,” he says in the tour.
When it comes to comps in the Pittsburgh area, this 700-square-foot condo in Downtown with access to loads of amenities is now listed for $359,900 — though it is missing those private recreation areas (and Jack-and-Jill bedrooms) that are a hallmark of a Tomlin build.
In the Strip District, a top-floor, three-bedroom unit with private entertaining space more closely matches the ethos of what Tomlin values in design. That home was listed for $1.15 million when it first went on the market in 2023.
While Tomlin has been working in sports media, and contemplating his future, since stepping away from the Steelers, the softer side he recently has began unveiling seems to be here to stay, and it’s a hit — for fans and for himself.
In a recent interview with USA Today, Tomlin summed up the revelation of his special interest like this: “It was therapeutic for me — some mindless entertainment. I’m not a big TV-watcher. It allowed me to detach from the realities and the pressures of life.”