Marty Kennedy and his wife Patty show off their Jayhawk float.

So, you’ve attached one of those plastic Jayhawk flags to your car window to commemorate KU’s drive for a national championship.

Folks, you’ve got to bring your “A” game today.

At 3 p.m. this afternoon, longtime Lawrence resident Marty Kennedy will be driving an entire Jayhawk vehicle up and down Massachusetts Street.

Called the Hawkinator, it is a giant papier måche-like Jayhawk mounted on top of a 1976 Dodge truck that has had its roof chopped off.

“We just thought it would be a good way to say, go Jayhawks,” said Kennedy, who is the owner of Kennedy Glass and a former Lawrence mayor.

Made from about 12,000 pieces of tissue paper attached to chicken wire, the Jayhawk came to life for last month’s St. Patrick’s Day parade. Kennedy and his wife, Patty, spent five weekends with other friends building the float in commemoration of the Jayhawks’ Orange Bowl victory. So, Patty is asking everyone to pretend the oranges the Jayhawk is carting around are actually basketballs.

“I don’t think I’ll have time to change all those,” Patty said this morning.

Folks on Mass. Street shouldn’t have a hard time imaging anything Jayhawk-related.

“This town has been so cool the last few weeks,” said Darcy Stefanik, a KU junior who was waiting outside a downtown bar before noon today. “It has really had an old, cool hippie type of vibe all week. Everybody is coming up and giving you hugs.”

“Yeah,” her friend and waiting partner Alexis Kruse said. “It is like a Jayhawk Mardi Gras.”

Call it what you will, but Kennedy has seen it before. A Lawrence native, he was here in 1988, the last time the Jayhawks won the national championship.

“You know, this day feels a lot like that one,” Kennedy said.