Mike Tomlin became the longest-tenured head coach in North American pro sports this offseason — a feat that doesn’t happen by accident. It takes an intrinsic drive to keep going, and Tomlin explained exactly what fuels him.
“I ain’t gonna kid you. I got a love affair with this game,” Tomlin said via The Pivot Podcast on YouTube. “It’s a real personal thing for me. I just love football. I love every component of it, every component of the journey, man. I’m excited every year because of that.”
If there wasn’t a genuine excitement to keep going, it may have been a natural for Tomlin to transition to the next phase of his life when Ben Roethlisberger left. Or perhaps when the Kenny Pickett experiment failed and the media chatter about him moving on got very loud.
It can’t be easy to find motivation every morning to get up and grind tape. Or to give every player and coach within the organization the attention they deserve to develop into the best version of themselves. The job of a coach is, by nature, a giving role. The only way to have the motivation and energy to keep going after almost two decades is if the job genuinely fills you up as much as it drains you.
For Tomlin, football isn’t just a job — it’s where he feels most at home. It shaped him into the man he is today.
“When I was young, man, football was the only thing that was black and white,” Tomlin said. “Life choices was gray. Football made sense. I learned discipline, structure, and a lot of things through my experiences in football. And so I mean that when I say it, man, I got a love affair with this game. I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.”
At the end of every disappointing season, media chatter picks up about whether Tomlin will step away from the head coaching job he has held since 2007. Without fail, he always answers that question the same way. There is nowhere else he’d rather be than Pittsburgh.
“There’s not a booster with a big enough blank check,” Tomlin said in 2021 when asked about taking a job in college football. And I’m sure he would say something similar about being a talking head in the media.
Tomlin signed a three-year extension last offseason that ties him to the Steelers through the 2027 season. Expect him to stay at least that long, and don’t be surprised if his tenure stretches well into a third decade with more contracts beyond that. He is married to the game, and the Steelers have never wavered in their commitment to him.
