About five years after winning his one-and-only Super Bowl (XLIII) with the Pittsburgh Steelers, coach Mike Tomlin decided to start a hobby that not many NFL coaches have: building a Minecraft city.
The former Steelers head coach recently revealed that he has been building his virtual city since 2014. Now, as fans eagerly ask for a peek into his creation, his oldest son, Dino, has shared some interesting updates regarding the sandblock video game.
“HE WANTS ME TO RECORD IT AND PUT IT ON YOUTUBE…,” Dino Tomlin shared on X. “WE GOTTA BREAK IT INTO SECTIONS THOUGH OR THE VIDEO WOULD BE 2 HOURS LONG… CHAT IS THAT WHAT WE WANT? IM NOT GONNA RECORD AND EDIT IF THE STREETS DONT WANT IT… cant just release the copy of the world cuz there’s shit in there.”
Dino’s post was a direct response to a fan demanding the Tomlin family officially “RELEASE THE MIKE T WORLD.”
He’d also joked about having to teach the game to his 54-year-old father, using the viral studio meme of Young Thug.
“I’m a big Minecrafter,” Mike Tomlin recently confessed during a Today Show interview with Craig Melvin. “I started playing Minecraft, man, when my kids were young. I have a Minecraft city, I’m creative, that I’ve been working on for like 12 years.”
To put Tomlin’s dedication into perspective, building a modest, good-looking city with multiple structures can easily take 30 to 40 hours of actual play time. According to veteran players online, completing just one detailed building typically takes about 20 minutes in Creative Mode. And that’s the mode where players get infinite supplies without any risk of being attacked by monsters at night.
Adding details to the said city, like building roofs, setting up lighting, furnishing the rooms, and building the roads, can push a single project well beyond 50 hours of playtime. Tomlin, however, claims he has spent roughly 12 years building his virtual city, meaning he’s been doing this when the game wasn’t even as big as it is now. That timeline hints at how complex and sprawling the virtual metropolis must be. And that’s why the city has captured the gaming community’s interest.
The sheer challenges of building a Minecraft city of this scale are daunting. Aside from the time commitment, digital cities require meticulous planning. Imagine building 50 identical apartment furnishings, or laying down endless blocks for suburban houses. Tedious, right?
Minecrafter Blip Noir holds a Guinness World Record for taking more than six years to build his fictional city of Newisle. Tomlin should be in the running to steal that honor.
Nevertheless, his children have been pushing him to release his massive creation for ages. Minecraft has been known as a game for the younger generation, but the 15-21 age group forms 43% of the game’s user base. It is unknown how much of the share is made up by the bracket Mike Tomlin belongs to, but the game is popular among the older generation, too.
However, it is his lack of technical understanding of file transfers and online servers that has prevented him from uploading it directly. His children are the ones who have taken his creation from PlayStation 3 to PlayStation 4, and now to PlayStation 5. Fortunately, he is now seriously committed to sharing his life’s work with the world.
“They’re into preserving it because they know I don’t have the technical knowledge,” Tomlin confessed. “But we’ve been talking recently about sharing it with the world. My oldest son is like, ‘Dad, you gotta share this with the world. People need to see this city that you’ve been working on for 12 years.’ We’ve been talking about it recently about how am I gonna share it with the world.”
For now, the fans will have to wait for Dino to finish editing his father’s Minecraft city tour, as Tomlin settles into his TV role at NBC Sports. The former coach can finally get the world’s judgment on his decade-old work.
Is a Twitch stream incoming? We will have to wait and watch.