AP Photo/Ed ReinkeDuke coach Mike Krzyzewski congratulates UNLV's Stacey Augmon (left) and Larry Johnson in 1990.

Take a look at the four No. 1 seeds in this year's NCAA tournament and raise your hand, if you're not already bored.

Kansas' roster has been playing college ball for, what, 20 straight years? Yet, they haven't managed to make any connection with the public. Syracuse? No buzz. Duke has hit a modern low, because nobody even bothers to really hate them anymore. John Wall, DeMarcus Cousins, Eric Bledsoe, Patrick Patterson and John Calipari are all on the cover of the latest issue of SLAM Magazine. They have the buzz, but they don't really resonate.

When is the last time that a college squad really had any cultural relevance?

Twenty years ago, UNLV ran through the tournament and annihilated Duke for the 1990 championship. At that time and for the next year, they were the most hated and loved team, not just in college basketball, but probably in all of sports. This was back when college teams -- whether as villains, counter-culture heroes or American darlings -- still held cultural cache. Before UNLV, Georgetown and big John Thompson stalked through college campuses stoking Hoya Paranoia. After UNLV, you had Duke as the polarizing prep-boy program and, of course, Michigan's Fab Five.

Hip hop had truly arrived as a cultural movement by 1990, and UNLV was the first team, in any sport, to truly embody the hip hop ethos. They were the only team rocking black kicks (which the Fab Five copied and added black socks). Larry Johnson had gold fronts and rocked the "part up the middle," while Anderson Hunt had the high-top fade. They were the ones that started the decade long trend of team huddles in between free throws. LJ, Moses Scurry and Greg Butler snarled and roared after rebounds and blocks.

If you weren't watching music videos on The Box or listening to Public Enemy, N.W.A. or the Geto Boys, then UNLV was your window into this growing cultural movement. They even preceded Hollywood films like "New Jack City" and "Boyz N the Hood."

That just doesn't exist in college basketball anymore. Grown men from Philadelphia aren't walking around wearing Kentucky T-shirts these days the way grown men from Seattle walked around wearing Runnin' Reb T-shirts in the early '90s.

Those days are gone and you what? I really miss 'em.