In four years of college football, Nikhai Hill-Green has already played a lot of games and experienced a lot of different things.

The opportunity to experience something new at Colorado, however, was too good to pass up. The former Michigan and Charlotte linebacker recently announced his decision to transfer to CU and join head coach Deion Sanders’ Buffaloes this summer.

“Colorado, it’s a unique opportunity,” the fifth-year junior said. “It’s really a time to win now and to be your best now, and that’s the challenge I want to accept. They’re not going to settle for anything less than being your best, and my mentality is the same exact way. So it’s just a match made in heaven.”

Hill-Green, listed by Charlotte as 6-foot-2, 232 pounds, comes to CU with 25 games of college experience, including 13 as a starter. This summer and fall, he’ll compete for a starting job in the middle of the Buffs’ defense.

“(The CU coaches) see me with veteran experience, and they feel like I can add a lot of value, just for my versatility, and a lot of things that don’t show up on the attributes,” he said. “I’m an obnoxious communicator; I learn defense easy. I can regurgitate information to everyone else on the field.”

He also produces when he’s on the field, posting 73 tackles, nine tackles for loss and two sacks at Charlotte last year.

The Pittsburgh native was four-star recruit coming out of St. Frances Academy in 2020 and spent three seasons at Michigan. He started six games for the Wolverines in 2021, finishing with 50 tackles that season. In 2022, Hill-Green didn’t get on the field at Michigan and said, “It just wasn’t my time.”

A new opportunity presented itself the next year, though. His high school coach, Biff Poggi, was on the Michigan staff in 2021 and 2022 and was hired as the head coach at Charlotte after the 2022 season. Hill-Green went through spring practices at Michigan in 2023, but then decided to reunite with Poggi.

“I just felt that the impact that I wanted to have and be an enforcer in the middle of the defense, I had to be on the field all three downs,” he said. “I just had to prove to NFL scouts that I could do it on a consistent level against great competition. So it ended up being a good situation. We played a good brand of defense at Charlotte last year.”

Coming to CU gives Hill-Green an opportunity to re-prove himself at a Power Four school, while also providing the opportunity to learn under a Buffs staff loaded with NFL experience. In addition to Sanders and graduate assistant Warren Sapp, both who are Hall of Famers, Hill-Green can learn from new defensive coordinator Robert Livingston, who spent the previous 12 years with the Cincinnati Bengals.

“I just want to be a sponge,” he said. “I want to be a sponge to all of these coaches, and just be a resource to all the players and just really leave a legacy here and just start something that’s going to be long lasting.”

Hill-Green said the CU defense is similar to what he ran at Michigan and Charlotte and he called it “very linebacker friendly.”

“For somebody like me, my style of play — just fast, versatile — it exposes the mismatches on the field,” he said. “When you have the athletes that we have on the defensive side, we can really exploit offenses and we can be aggressive. Once we’re playing offense on defense, we’re cooking. So that’s what (Livingston) does with this scheme. I’m looking forward to just mastering it and learning it the best as I can.”

At CU, Hill-Green will be under a spotlight, as much of what goes on with the Buffs under Sanders is filmed and broadcast on social media, as well as the Amazon Prime documentary “Coach Prime.”

That’s not a big deal to Hill-Green, whose high school team was featured on an HBO documentary “The Cost of Winning.” And there’s no hiding from the spotlight at Michigan.

“At the end of the day, we’ve got a job to do,” he said. “We’ve got some games to win and really just keep the main thing the main thing.”

For Hill-Green, the main thing has always been football, even if his location has changed a few times.

“My journey, it hasn’t been linear, but it’s been everything I needed,” he said. “I got developed at Michigan, I played big boy football, I played early at Michigan. I played at Charlotte in that real leadership role, where I had to bring a lot of people along and just show guys the way.

“I’ve worn a lot of different shoes in my college career thus far and I feel like it’s molded me and made me a really unique player just because I can relate to everyone in the locker room. … Thus far I’m blessed and I’m grateful to experience the stuff that I did. It’s been a good experience so far.”