When Deon Figures was a senior at Serra High School in Southern California, he had a lot of college recruiters contacting him.

Included in that group was a young recruiting coordinator at Colorado named Rick George. Whatever George, now the athletic director at CU, said to Figures worked, and the rest is history.

On Tuesday night, Figures became the 10th player from CU to be inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame.

“It’s surreal,” Figures said during an interview with the National Football Foundation after a Hall of Fame press conference in Las Vegas. “Probably need to pinch me right now to wake me up, but hopefully I can stay in this dream a little while longer.”

The 2024 Hall of Fame class includes 19 players and three coaches, including former NFL stars Larry Fitzgerald (who played collegiately at Pittsburgh), Randy Moss (Marshall) and Julius Peppers (North Carolina).

Figures, who played for the Buffs from 1988-92, is the fourth CU hall of famer who played for legendary coach Bill McCartney, who is also in the Hall. That group includes Alfred Williams (class of 2010), Michael Westbrook (2020) and Rashaan Salaam (2022).

For Figures, a highlight of this week was a dinner on Monday night in Las Vegas with George and former teammates.

“It was good to see some former players, you know, the ones that I played with,” he said to BuffZone.

“We just sat around and talked about the old days. Yeah, it was real good.”

The old days were a lot of fun for Figures and Buff Nation. During Figures’ five seasons in Boulder, the Buffs went 47-11-3 and won the national title in 1990.

Figures was a huge part of that success, racking up 176 tackles, 12 interceptions and 27 pass breakups in the four seasons he played (he was suspended by McCartney for the 1989 season after a pair of off-the-field incidents).

During the 1990 regular season, Figures posted a career-high 85 tackles, while adding two interceptions — both of them in a 20-14 win against No. 12 Washington at Folsom Field. The second one came in the end zone in the closing moments to seal the win.

Later that season, Figures would cap the Buffs’ lone national championship with a last-minute interception in a 10-9 victory against No. 5 Notre Dame in the Orange Bowl.

As a senior in 1992, he posted 38 tackles, eight pass breakups and a career-high six interceptions, while allowing just six completions in over 400 coverage snaps. Figures won the Jim Thorpe Award in 1992 as the nation’s top defensive back, was a consensus first-team All-American and the Big Eight defensive player of the year.

“It kind of surprised me,” he said of winning the Thorpe.

“I didn’t doubt myself or anything like that, but truthfully, I really wasn’t playing for the Thorpe Award. I was playing for my teammates. It was to the point where it wasn’t about displeasing Coach Mac or the coaching staff; it was (fear of) not living up to the standard that the guy next to you playing was living up to. … We were more accountable to ourselves, to each other, as opposed to the coaches. So, it meant the world to me (to win it).”

Figures, who was inducted into CU’s Athletic Hall of Fame in 2014, was selected in the first round (23rd overall) of the 1993 NFL Draft by the Pittsburgh Steelers. He played 93 career games in the NFL with the Steelers (1993-96) and Jacksonville Jaguars (1997-98).

Other CU greats in the College Hall of Fame that aren’t from the McCartney era including: Byron White (1952 class), Joe Romig (1984), Dick Anderson (1993), Bobby Anderson (2006), John Wooten (2012) and Herb Orvis (2016).

Figures is honored to be enshrined with that group, especially those he played with in Boulder.

“From the ‘87 class on up to, I want to say, ‘92, I think that’s when everything started to come together, everything started to jell (for CU),” he said. “All the guys that went in before me, they were my teammates so it was good to see them go in and I was wondering if I was ever going to get in.

“That winning era that we had, it was something else, because it brought a lot of guys together, not just as teammates, but as brothers in life, for the rest of our lives. We’re a close-knit group, and that’s what made it so special. We considered each other as a family.”