Sometimes people make choices in college athletics. Choices that are attempts to bend the rules, skirt the rules or even blatantly cheat the system in an effort to win. Often times these people are caught, investigations proceed and penalties are handed down. Almost always these penalties come down and really only hurt the people had little to no involvement in the original infraction.
When infractions are particularly bad programs have wins, championships, banners and entire seasons wiped out. Usually (OK, always) these vacated banners and seasons are seasons that we would rather remember. The 1997 Gopher Basketball team that made a memorable trip to the Final Four only to have that season (and several others) vacated because of an academic cheating scandal.