Lincoln City Are Back in the Championship After 65 Years and I Ranked the 9 Levels of a Club Returning From the Wilderness
by Mo Memes
PAM: Right, so Mo Memes wrote a piece ranking the nine levels of a football club returning from the wilderness, pegged to Lincoln City's promotion to the Championship for the first time since 1961, and honestly? It's one of the best things on this site this year. Genuinely captures how absurd this story is.
PETE: It's good, yeah, but I think Mo undersold it. Nine levels? NINE? Lincoln's journey needs at least fourteen levels. Maybe twenty. They were in the Conference, Pam. The CONFERENCE. In 2017! That's not a wilderness, that's being declared legally dead and then showing up at your own funeral in a suit.
PAM: I mean, that's essentially what Level 1 of Mo's ranking covers. "Weren't they in the Conference like five minutes ago?" It's right there.
PETE: But do people understand the SCALE of this? Sixty-five years. I did the maths. That is roughly 2,990 league games that other clubs played in the Championship while Lincoln were pottering around in the lower divisions and non-league football. Two thousand, nine hundred and ninety. Give or take. I didn't actually do the maths. But it FEELS right.
PAM: It does not feel right. That number is completely made up.
PETE: The point stands. Lincoln have gone from the fifth tier to the second tier in nine years. That's not a football story, that's a Football Manager save that got out of hand. Someone left the game running overnight and Lincoln just kept getting promoted.
PAM: What I actually love about this, and what Mo's ranking captures brilliantly, is how these stories rewrite a club's entire identity. Lincoln were a punchline for decades. Conference club. Fourth tier perennials. And now they're going to be playing in the same division as clubs with ten times their budget. That's genuinely remarkable.
PETE: They're going to get absolutely battered, Pam. And it's going to be GLORIOUS. I want Lincoln versus Leeds on a Tuesday night in November. I want Lincoln's centre-back marking someone who costs more than their entire squad. I want the chaos.
PAM: See, this is why you don't get invited to nice things. The story isn't "Lincoln will struggle." The story is that a club kept believing, kept building, kept pushing through non-league football, League Two, League One, and came out the other side. It's one of the great modern football stories.
PETE: Oh, I agree. I'm not mocking them. I'm CELEBRATING them. Lincoln in the Championship is peak football. It's proof that the pyramid works. It's proof that weird things can still happen. It's proof that if you just keep going for sixty-five years, eventually something good happens. That's basically my life motto.
PAM: That explains a lot about your career trajectory.
PETE: The Beatles hadn't released an album the last time Lincoln were in this division, Pam. THE BEATLES. An entire cultural revolution happened while Lincoln were in the lower leagues. The internet was invented. Phones got smart. We put a rover on Mars. And Lincoln just kept grinding away, waiting. Patient. Like a really slow, really determined cat at a mouse hole.
PAM: That's actually quite poetic for you.
PETE: I have layers, Pam. Like Lincoln's journey through the football pyramid. Many, many layers.
PAM: Congratulations to Lincoln City. Genuinely. One of the stories of the season.
PETE: Enjoy the Championship, you beautiful weirdos. See you at the meme factory when you play Manchester United's reserves in the League Cup. 💀