Among college football’s many rituals, the annual Heisman Trophy presentation remains one of the highlights. Fans and coaches and former stars gather in Manhattan each December to honor the season’s outstanding player. This season, about two dozen former winners stood on the stage as another member was added to their exclusive club.

But in avoiding any mention of two controversial winners, the Heisman ceremony was notable for another recent trend: colleges and sports teams that love to celebrate their history have become masters at editing it. Often this is done quietly, with computer keystrokes altering a record book, and not with an angry mob throwing a rope around a statue’s neck on the stadium steps.

But sports, perhaps better than any endeavor except politics, has become adept at a type of cleansing more commonly associated with authoritarian governments. With surprising regularity and ease, once-popular figures who have run afoul of the rules or the law have been erased like disgraced leaders from an old Soviet photo album, whitewashed from history to preserve an institution’s image or to abide by a governing body’s sanctions.

Awards are returned. Banners are pulled down. Names are stripped from buildings. Wins, individual feats, even entire seasons can be eradicated as if they never happened.