Shannon Murphy, Lawrence, has a license plate that displays the years of Kansas University's three national basketball championships.

Shannon Murphy rambles around town with a vanity license plate – 5288N08 – that no one else can claim, celebrating Kansas University’s national basketball championships in 1952, 1988 and, of course, 2008.

The lifelong Jayhawk fan wouldn’t mind struggling to come up with a way to squeeze a 2009 onto her seven-digit metal placard of mobility.

“I don’t know what I’ll do next,” said Murphy, who scored her prized plate by showing up at the treasurer’s satellite office just before 7 a.m. April 8, a few hours after KU beat Memphis for the title in an improbable overtime. “I’ll run out of room, but I’d like to have that problem.”

As KU’s men’s basketball team starts another run on the Road to the Final Four, they’ll be sharing the pavement with dozens of cars and trucks statewide that boast plates emblazoned with numbers, words and abbreviated phrases that embrace the crimson and blue.

In Douglas County alone, vehicle owners have ordered or renewed enough vanity plates featuring KU-themed variations to overtake a section at Allen Fieldhouse. Among them:

¢ KU108

¢ KU188

¢ KUNO1

¢ YEAHAWK

The totals don’t even include the hundreds of official Jayhawk license plates issued in cooperation with the KU Alumni Association, which collects a $50 or $60 royalty – depending on the vehicle – for use of the Jayhawk logo. The state issues the plates, which carry random numbers and are not allowed to be personalized.

The association reports that sales of such plates are up so far this year, following up on the football team’s 12-1 season and Orange Bowl championship, and the basketball team’s snuffing out North Carolina and Memphis to secure an NCAA title in San Antonio.

Through the end of April, 1,509 such plates were in circulation statewide.

RU4KU2?

While fans long have found endless avenues to show off their support, the state’s personalized plates command a certain level of respect among KU faithful. That’s perhaps understandable, considering that such tags are official, state-sponsored and exclusive interpretations of devotion that endure well beyond some other items:

¢ Posterboard signs that get trampled as 16,299 other fans leave the fieldhouse.

¢ A lucky Jayhawk T-shirt destined to disintegrate after 172 wash-and-wearings, one for each and every day between Friday’s Late Night in the Phog and the April 6 NCAA championship game in Detroit.

¢ Tattoos that can fade into obscurity, or at least duck beneath business attire when transitioning from the classroom to the boardroom.

Messages on personalized vehicle tags are both high profile and long lasting, having been pressed into plates cut from sheets of aluminum and affixed to vehicles deemed legal to roam the roads and highways of America.

Aside from the usual registration fees and taxes, the cost of a personalized tag is $40 upfront, payable once in each five-year plate cycle.

Cost doesn’t appear to be steering anyone away.

“Most people who have these plates – especially the Jayhawk ones – have had them since the beginning of time,” said Yvonne Rapp, deputy Douglas County treasurer.

Don’t ask ‘Y’

For Eleanor Nelson, keeper of the coveted JAYHAWK plate in Douglas County, it only seems that long.

That’s because her husband, Bob “Nellie” Nelson, wasn’t about to let anyone else get away with the prized plate. The guy known as “Ol’ Jayhawk,” who took his first class at KU in 1940 and worked on Mount Oread for 32 years, ushered in the state’s vanity plate era by grabbing JAHAWK in 1975.

When he heard that the state would be adding a seventh character for such plates, back in 1977, Nelson couldn’t wait to snag the “Y” – the missing letter that had gone unseen but understood on his wheels for the previous two years.

“When he found out that would happen, he rushed down to the office and got JAYHAWK,” Eleanor Nelson said. “He was the first one down there and the first one to get it.”

She isn’t about to let it go now, not with all the supportive honks she gets, friendly waves she sees and boisterous cheers she hears around her blue minivan.

Consider the time she ambled out of Kohl’s to find three college guys passing behind the Toyota Sienna, instantly becoming its loyal subjects.

“They all did the bow – as kids do, with their arms all extended – and bowed to the plate as they went by,” she said. “I said, ‘You like that plate, do you?’ and told them the story of how my husband got it.”

Such tales continue to empower her, and she’s planning to turn their old JAHAWK and JAYHAWK plates into a decorative border for a Jayhawk Room at home.

She has plenty, of course. The state issues two plates per vehicle, a process repeated every five years, and for each cycle the Nelsons dutifully put one tag on the vehicle and tuck another away for safe keeping.

“Believe it or not, we’ve never had one stolen – even when we’ve gone to Manhattan,” she said. “We’ve been pretty fortunate, I guess. But I’ve always kept one at home, as a spare, just in case.”

Eleanor Nelson is looking forward to the next run of plates, due out in 2010, and how the JAYHAWK registration – the visual evidence of a consecutive-plate streak established by her husband – will attract attention.

“It’s pretty special,” she said. “It’s special to him, and I treasure it now.”

JHAWK 1 endures

Norva Sinclair considers her plate, JHAWK 1, as nothing short of “wonderful.” Her husband, Roy, had signed on for it back in the early 1980s, while they lived in Barton County.

Now that he’s gone – Roy died in 2000, two years after they moved to Lawrence – the plate offers lasting, visible reminders of something that can’t ever be lost. She’ll be renewing the registration this month.

“In my husband’s eyes, the Jayhawks are always No. 1, whether they win or lose,” said Sinclair, now 70. “It’s carrying on his love for the Jayhawks and its traditions. It’s a good thing to remember.”

Now that the Jayhawks actually are No. 1, as defending national champions in basketball, Sinclair reports that her 2000 Villager minivan is attracting even more attention than usual.

“I always figured, from the beginning, that everybody would think I’m the coach’s wife,” she said, with a laugh. “But this (title) is an added bonus. No one can get that, now that I have it. It’s an added bonus, especially since we’ve supported them for so many years.”

Murphy, who earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at KU, understands the attachment. The concept behind her 5288N08 plate actually occurred to her in 2003, as KU was beating Marquette and taking on Syracuse in the Final Four in New Orleans.

KU lost that title game, of course, leaving Murphy to anxiously anticipate each April, wondering when she might finally be able to turn her seven spaces of creativity into an on-the-road reality.

Only after Mario Chalmers sent the 2008 title game into overtime, and the Jayhawks had closed out their 75-68 victory, could Murphy finally exhale.

“I’d kept my mouth shut about it all night. I didn’t want to jinx it,” she said. “But when the game ended, I yelled it: ‘I’M GONNA GET MY PLATE!’ “

Whether she’ll need an update come this April remains to be determined.