Steelers coach quietly giving back to Hampton Roads

If an "appearance" is a celebrity showing up as advertised, then OK, Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike Tomlin will "appear" on the Peninsula over the next three days to benefit the Hampton Roads Youth Foundation.

Pardon Tomlin, however, if he scrambles from that characterization. Tomlin would rather be seen sans quotation marks as he walks again among family, friends and fans - simply a grateful man home to lend a hand.

Same as it ever was.

"I guess the view of it has changed because of the job that I have," Tomlin said this week from Pittsburgh, "but I've been making an effort to come down there for years. It was just, I guess, with a little less fanfare when I was a position coach for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers."

So mute the trumpets.

"This is not an appearance; I don't view it in that way," he said. "I'm going back... to spend time with these kids, to give some football instruction, teach them about life and hopefully inspire someone. To give them a leg up, like was given to me."

Tomlin will begin as the featured guest at tonight's "Tailgate With Tomlin" at the Hampton Roads Convention Center in Hampton, a festival-like meet-and-greet with Tomlin and various local NFL players that's open to the public.

Friday and Saturday, Tomlin will sweat with some 200-plus campers each day - from youth to high school football age - at free Peninsula All-Star Football camps at Christopher Newport University.

"Mike is a giver," says Carl Francis, a Peninsula native and chairman of the Hampton Roads Youth Foundation, "and he loves his community."

How so? Francis, also director of communications for the NFL Players Association, tells a story from a couple years ago when Steelers

business detained Tomlin and poor flight connections threatened to significantly cut into his time in town.

Nothing doing; Tomlin hopped in his car and drove seven hours from Pittsburgh, arriving as introductions opened the first camp.

"It's amazing how it means so much to him," Francis said.

Tomlin, 38, who played receiver at William and Mary but never in the NFL, said he comes by it honestly. Youthful memories of attending free camps on the Peninsula run by Tommy Reamon, now coach at Landstown High, and of the efforts of volunteer mentors have steered Tomlin home every summer since he met Francis about a decade ago.

"I have a youth camp in Pittsburgh," Tomlin said, "but it's different. It's a skills camp, and kids pay for it. This more than anything is about giving back to the community from which I came.

"I'm very blessed, and there are responsibilities that come with that.... Hopefully, I can touch the lives of some of the young kids who come to our camp, and 20 years from now, they'll in turn do the same thing."

Day-to-day conversation with Tomlin these days can turn any number of directions - from his status as the youngest head coach to win a Super Bowl, on Feb. 1, 2009, to his team's collapse last year, to the travails of Pittsburgh's suspended quarterback Ben Roethlisberger.

But when Tomlin's home, day-to-day takes a holiday.

"I don't want to talk about business," Tomlin said, declining comment on Steelers issues. "I don't come to Virginia to talk about my job."

If asked at camp, though, he said he'll tell kids what he always does: He's excited about the new season, about chasing a championship, and that Roethlisberger and other misbehaving NFL stars "are no different than any other people in any walks of life. They have common human frailty, and it's important they make corrections and move on from it like anybody else."

The best part for Tomlin each July, though, is bringing home a common humanity. And he hopes it lingers within those who walk where he walked.

"I don't want kids to think that I'm some alien that was dropped off of some spaceship," he said. "I'm Mike Tomlin; I'm from Newport News; I graduated from Denbigh High. Yes, I've been very blessed. But a lot of the things that have happened to me have come out of just working and being normal."

And normal, Tomlin reminds, is never about appearances.

Tom Robinson, (757) 446-2518, tom.robinson@pilotonline.com