The University of Hawaii won a men’s volleyball championship in 2002. Or did it? Coach John Calipari earned his 500th college basketball victory last season. Or did he?

For dozens of universities across collegiate sports, for the players who competed, for the officials who whistled fouls and for the fans who paid for tickets, those games happened. Yet technically, they did not.

Welcome to the fuzzy world of modern college athletics, where the N.C.A.A. often requires teams to vacate victories as punishment for rules violations. Rampant infractions have resulted in a post facto revision of record books across all sports.

This brand of punishment, although not entirely new, has been used by the N.C.A.A. with increasing frequency in recent years. Last month alone, the N.C.A.A. vacated the final three games of Georgia Tech’s 2009 football season, including its conference championship, for using an ineligible player, and Ohio State offered to vacate each of its 2010 football victories, including its Big Ten Conference championship and Sugar Bowl victory, as a pre-emptive move before the N.C.A.A. issued its ruling on possible violations by the Buckeyes.