We may finally have cracked the case as to why the Pittsburgh Steelers stagnated so much over the final years of Mike Tomlin’s tenure as head coach: he was focused on virtual urban planning. It’s good when people in high-pressure jobs have creative hobbies. Count this writer (and his interior designer wife) among those who were gobsmacked on Wednesday night by Tomlin’s reveal of a 12-year-long project in Minecraft, the world-building game.
Tomlin had teased that during his coaching career, he took up Minecraft city-building as a way to connect with his young children. We have now seen the fruits of that labor, and they are magnificent. Look my my works, Terry Bradshaw, and despair.
One can see how this sort of “mindless entertainment” would’ve been helpful to a man in his position. Tomlin was building up his Minecraft city (whose name is still unclear) during a tumultuous period in Steelers history. When star tailback Le’Veon Bell declined to sign his franchise tag in 2018, keeping the Steelers offense in limbo all season?
When Antonio Brown blew up his relationship with Ben Roethlisberger and ultimately forced a trade to the Raiders? When the Pittsburgh sports media turned on him for not winning any playoff games in nearly a decade? Where Tomlin’s description of his Minecraft experience doesn’t make sense, however, is when he calls the experience “mindless”.
It’s clear that Tomlin’s project was anything but. The city is built around a central body of water, not terribly unlike the city where the coach built his NFL legend. (Pittsburgh has three rivers meeting at Point State Park. Tomlin’s city has a big lake from which the whole urban landscape flows outward.) “This is kind of where it all started, around this body of water,” the coach deadpans.
Tomlin is about to take us through his universe, one he crafted over the years with evidently painstaking detail. Tomlin tells us about the first building he ever constructed, ostensibly around 2014, when the Steelers won the AFC North behind a 1,700-yard receiving season from Brown and 1,300 on the ground from Bell. It’s a “boutique hotel” with an executive spa off the main lobby, featuring therapy rooms.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
