It’s always a little startling to me whenever any campus organization announces “we’re starting a new tradition,” so when Student Wolfpack Club president Amanda Woolard repeated this very decree verbatim, I was already aggravated.

“New” and “tradition” shouldn’t be side by side like that in the same sentence. Consider it in the same category as “jumbo shrimp” and “underwater fire prevention.”

Maybe I’m too practical, but I like to think traditions aren’t created anew — they happen over time. First you try out a ritual a few times, and if it sticks for about five years, you’ve got yourself a tradition.

With all this playing in my mind, I reluctantly took part in the Student Wolfpack Club’s effort for its “new tradition” by way of a last-minute entrance — more a “march-in” right before tip — for the two biggest home basketball games of the year, Duke and North Carolina.

Now that those games are over, I say go ahead and advance the next four years, this should be something that sticks around long enough to become tradition.

However, overdoing this march-in would only take away the electricity and aura from the event — so board members must keep it specifically for the big games.

Besides, it’s in those games when members, while waiting around in the RBC Center concourse for their cue to enter, get a chance to talk trash and jeer any and all passers-by who lack red and white in their wardrobe.

It gives our students their only opportunity to heckle other fans at the game. After all, if you lose that big game, there’s nothing to brag about.

And ironically enough, should you win the big game as we saw on Feb. 3, you won’t get much of a chance to taunt either, because as the students celebrate on the court, the opposing fans race out of the stadium to see who can get on I-40 West the quickest.

Since I took part in both walk-ins, it’s impossible for me to say how it looked from the outside, so I asked a few people what they thought — and the consensus gave it two thumbs up.

My colleague Dennis Burton certainly approved, and he’s seen it all in his almost-a-decade tenure at the school.

But the entrance into the lower levels of the RBC Center shouldn’t be done for the quest of new traditions, more opportunities to trash-talk and certainly not for the sake of having Dennis say, “Man, that sure looked cool.”

More taunting is great and everything, but the walk-in is useless unless it provides some sort of a morale boost for the team.

So I asked a few players what they thought of it all. After all, their opinions matter the most.

OK, player one, what did you think?

“It was pretty hype,” Kenny Pittman said. “I was pumped.”

Excellent, mission accomplished.

But how pumped could he possibly have been? State lost to the Blue Devils 79-56 that game.

That doesn’t help my case much, but what about the next game? The one we’ll never forget?

OK, player two, would you say the entrance set the mood for the emotional win over the hated Tar Heels?

“I liked it,” Justin Clark said. “The crowd in warm-ups doesn’t really matter until three minutes till tip-off and the first minutes of the game anyway. It was pretty cool, man.”

Perfect! The walk-in usually starts with about three minutes left until tip-off, making it work out just fine.

The players like it, so it sounds like the club has a winner.

So keep marching on Student Wolfpack Club. The players will be expecting you.