AUSTIN — Mike Hardge has been a regular for years on Austin sports radio, but he spent four years in Lubbock during and after the time he spent as an infielder for the Lubbock Crickets independent minor-league baseball team.

That made his perspective an uncommon one among those who attended Friday's Texas Tech football game with Texas, the last in the series for the foreseeable future.

He likes both sides.

"As somebody that has been in both cities and seen both sides of the passion and the fan bases, it kind of sucks," Hardge said of the hiatus on a 73-game series. "This is one of my favorite games, whether it's the tortillas that are being thrown in Lubbock or the fans that live in Austin, Texas, and how much passion that they have for their school, it's a really sad situation, because of the fact that there's so much history between both of these teams.

"I know a lot of people don't like to go to West Texas. I know a lot of people from West Texas don't want to come to Austin. But when they do meet, it's always something fun."

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Texas Tech and Texas, charter members of the Big 12, will part at the end of the school year when the Longhorns begin competition in the Southeastern Conference. Tech officials have been vocal about wanting to continue playing Texas as non-conference opponents, but Texas has not reciprocated the interest — at least not to the extent of playing on an annual basis, which Tech prefers.

That's why Darrell and Bunny Bednarz were among the few scarlet-and-black clad fans in a sea of burnt orange two hours before kickoff outside Royal-Memorial Stadium.

"We wanted to make this one," Bunny Bednarz said, mentioning her several family members in attendance. "It's all because this is the end."

Darrell Bednarz graduated from Slaton High School in 1976. He and some of his friends started making the trips downstate back then, as teenagers riding with older guys.

"My buddies and I, we'd come out after a Friday night football game, and we would leave like at 12 o'clock (midnight) and get here early in the morning," he said. "Then I don't know how we suffered through the rest of the day, but we'd come out to the game, catch the game and head back home."

Years later, as a parent, Bednarz brought his oldest son to a Tech game in Austin. They were rewarded with a Red Raiders victory.

"He and I drove down Sixth Street with our hands out, yelling," Bednarz said.

"Had the sunroof back, the windows down, I think," Bunny Bednarz said. "They were having a big time."

Derek Akers, 34, is from a younger generation. He earned a master's degree from Tech in 2013 and a doctorate in 2016. But Friday was his second time to see one of the Red Raiders' most passionate rivalries go dormant. He arrived at Tech just as the Red Raiders were getting ready to their last football game with Texas A&M.

"Time and distance just makes the rivalries disappear," Akers said, "and I'm sad that that's what's happening to college football right now. When I started as a Tech fan, back in 2011, it was the last year that A&M got to play Texas Tech, and we hated each other and I'm sure 20 years before that, the people who I knew, they hated A&M. And so I'm so I'm really sad that that's another rivalry that's ending."

Hardge was doing a radio pre-game show outside the stadium on Friday in his role with Sports Radio AM 1300 The Zone. Among his contemporaries growing up in Killeen were future Tech football players Charlie Rowe, Anthony McDowell and Marcus Washington. Then as a young professional baseball player in Lubbock, he got to know Zebbie Lethridge, Marcus Coleman, Ricky Williams, Zach Thomas and members of the Red Raiders' Sweet 16 basketball team of 1996.

He played for the Crickets in 1996 and 1997 and, after catching on in the St. Louis Cardinals' system, lived in Lubbock for a couple more years in the off-season.

"Whenever people ask me a question about Lubbock," Hardge said, "I always say I had some of my best times in Lubbock. Maybe it was because of the sport I was playing. Maybe it was the time that I was there, but I lived there during the off-season too, so I got a chance to go to all the football games. I got a chance to be a part of the community.

"I love the place. I love West Texas. People are always like, 'I can't believe you like it that much.' I'm like, 'There are great people out there, a good time, and they care about their athletics.' "

This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: People on both sides lament hiatus of Texas Tech football series with UT