An NFL Legend Is About to Reveal the Minecraft City He Spent 12 Years Building

Published Sep 29, 2026, 2:00 PM EDT After playing games all her life, Lillian now writes about gaming for Polygon. Since deciding to study journalism in college, she's written and reported articles on government, science, and entertainment for The Dayton Daily News, Smithsonian Magazine, The Daily Northwestern, and more. She also makes crossword puzzles for fun, and likes sneaking gaming trivia into the clues she writes. When you have red dye, you dye the wool red Image: Mojang/Microsoft Sign in to your Polygon.com account Former Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin has set plenty of records throughout his career. After winning the 2008 AFC Championship Game, he became the youngest NFL head coach to reach a Super Bowl. A few weeks later, he became the youngest coach to win a Super Bowl (Los Angeles Rams coach Sean McVay has since surpassed both records). In his 19 years with the Steelers, Tomlin never had a losing season — the longest such streak in the league’s history. Earlier this year, Tomlin announced he was stepping down. He signed a massive contract with NBC and now serves as a Football Night in America analyst. But the trivial, inconsequential world of national sports broadcasting wasn’t enough for Tomlin. Mere months after officially starting his lucrative television career, Tomlin set his sights on a far more important — and prestigious — world: Gaming YouTube. In a few days, Mike Tomlin will set perhaps the most important record of his career: becoming the first former NFL coach to start posting YouTube videos about his Minecraft server. In an interview this month with Today’s Craig Melvin, Tomlin revealed he was a “big Minecrafter.” “I have a Minecraft city, on creative, man, that I’ve been working on for like 12 years,” said Tomlin, who started playing Minecraft to connect with his three children. Tomlin continued to play long after his children stopped. Eventually, they had to help him transfer his city from PS3 to PS4 to PS5. As soon as the interview dropped, fans were begging to see the city, and the moment went viral on various social media platforms. Apparently, Tomlin’s son encouraged him to reveal his work publicly. Then, last week, Tomlin announced he would show his magnum opus to the world. In a post on X, Tomlin said he was dropping a YouTube video revealing his city on Wednesday, Sept. 30. In the post, Tomlin referred to his “secret obsession” as “therapeutic.” “It allowed me to detach from the realities and the pressure of life,” said Tomlin. As of this writing, the post has more than 64,000 likes on the social media platform. Tomlin’s YouTube channel only has a short introductory video at the moment, but he’s already got more than 7,000 subscribers. Until the video drops, fans can only speculate about what Tomlin’s city may contain. One could assume buildings, streets, and things of that nature. Regardless, we can only hope that Tomlin’s city lives up to the high standard he set as a football coach. As Tomlin likely knows by now, there’s a fine line between building and placing blocks. Free sign-up Get Polygon’s Wishlister newsletter A weekly cheat sheet to what you’ll eventually love to play. No buying, no commitment — just saving for later. Sign up free Free. Unsubscribe anytime.