As Myles Jack was about to take the field in Week 16 against the Bengals for his first snaps of the 2023 NFL season, Steelers coach Mike Tomlin made sure to get in his ear for a second.

“You thought you were just going to be a hockey owner for the rest of your life, huh?”

Jack couldn’t help but smile and shake his head. His return to Pittsburgh this past season as a practice squad linebacker-turned-playoff-starter is part of his retirement journey, but so is a foray into seeing professional sports from the other side of the aisle.

In October, Jack and his mom, LaSonjia, took over the Allen Americans, an NHL farm club that plays in the ECHL. The Jacks are savvy businesspeople, hockey enthusiasts and a mother-son duo that works in harmony to run their team in the Dallas area. They’re also the only Black majority owners of a pro hockey franchise, and while that isn’t lost on them, they don’t want to make it about them.

“It’s definitely a good feeling,” Jack said. “But I think the bottom line is just to be able to bring people in.”

For instance, Jack’s Steelers teammates who would look a bit stunned when he told them he bought a hockey team since they last saw him at the end of the 2022 season. Jack jumped back into football in November, but once the 2023 campaign ended with a loss to the Bills in the first round of the playoffs, Jack’s contract expired as a member of the practice squad.

That means he’s technically a free agent again at age 28 in the eyes of the NFL. In the ECHL world, he’s turned his full focus back to calling the shots for the Americans, with the help of his mom, team president Jonny Mydra and the rest of the organization’s support staff.

“He jumped right in there when we had the team. He spent time with the players working out, seeing their workouts, seeing their nutrition and what they do and how they play on the ice,” said LaSonjia, who brings more of the traditional experience working in the corporate world. “And just listening to them, you know? Listening to what they need.”

Mydra insists Jack has been far too humble in hand-waving his role as a young, Black owner in a sport that admittedly didn’t mean much to him growing up. The players respect his eight-year NFL career, according to Mydra, and are excited to have a boss who can relate to them on an unusual level.

Jack couldn’t be particularly hands-on when the Steelers called him to come back about a month after he and his mom finalized their purchase of the Americans, a move that came after they dabbled in investing in other teams earlier in his playing days. That’s where LaSonjia shined with her 25 years of experience in operations for companies such as Microsoft, AT&T, T-Mobile and Cox Communications.

“It’s like a perfect son-mom marriage,” LaSonjia said.

In that sense, Jack’s unexpected two-month stint with the Steelers was almost like an unofficial work study opportunity. Wearing a suit with the Americans and a jersey for the Steelers, Jack found himself picking the brains of people throughout UPMC Rooney Sports Complex — trainers, dietitians, front office members — and even noticing something about the team headquarters itself.

That hospital seemingly sponsors everything around here. Jack was spending most of his time getting back up to speed in Tomlin’s and Teryl Austin’s defense, but in the back of his mind, he found himself observing aspects of the business of sports that active players typically might not think about.

“It’s good to have that perspective on things,” Jack said. “Even at owners meetings when they’re talking about CBAs and stuff, there’s times as a player, I’m cringing. But then as an owner, I’m like, ‘I do understand that.’ I’m caught in between.”

The decision for Jack to switch sides of the ball — much like when he starred at running back and linebacker at UCLA — wasn’t impulsive. His first taste came in 2020, working with Zawyer Sports and Entertainment, based in Jacksonville, where Jack spent his first six years in the NFL. That led to investing in the ECHL’s Jacksonville Icemen, Savannah Ghost Pirates and other franchises.

But Zawyer approached Jack about making the Americans his own gig, and he felt ready for it, coming to terms with the likelihood that he’d put away his cleats for the last time. The Steelers cut him last March, and he had a brief dalliance with the Eagles before stepping away, telling them he was done with ball.

In the meantime, Jack ramped up his pilot classes, an interest in aviation first sparked by Paul Posluszny, the Hopewell High School and Penn State great with whom Jack played two years with the Jaguars. He’s still living in Jacksonville but plans to move to Dallas so that it will be easier to spend more time around the Americans and the fanbase.

LaSonjia grew up around hockey in Evanston, Ill., but Myles was all about football as a kid. He was born in Scottsdale, Ariz., and went to high school in Bellevue, Wash., near Seattle. While he hardly considers himself an expert on the ice, he loves the atmosphere, the physicality and, yeah, the rush of seeing two guys drop the gloves and settle something.

“They’re similar sports. It’s a lot of hitting each other. They land on ice, we land on turf,” Jack said with a laugh. “It’s very cool going in there after the game, talking to the players, chopping it up with them, understanding what a loss feels like, understanding what a win feels like.”

With his mom’s assistance, Jack gave back to the community early and often with his NFL platform. He was the Jaguars’ nominee for Walter Payton Man of the Year and the NFL’s Salute to Service Award in 2021.

Now they’re pouring themselves into another city, in between Jack’s “therapeutic” workouts, just in case his phone rings from an NFL team again. More than likely, he and LaSonjia — who’s now on the board of the Allen/Fairview Chamber of Commerce — will keep themselves busy with the Americans.

The team is 21-24-2-1 and in 10th place of 14 teams in the Western Conference as an affiliate of the Ottawa Senators. For now, that’s a footnote in the story of a mom who used to ice skate every Friday in middle school and now shares that passion with her son, all while trying to spread the game to anyone who might enjoy it.

“What I’m finding out is all types of people love hockey once they come,” LaSonjia said. “A lot of people say, ‘Hey, I saw you in an ad, I heard about it, I came out to a game, and I love it.’ I think us being African-Americans, that’s absolutely wonderful. But I think more people, no matter what the color, are coming to the sport.”