LEIPZIG, Germany — Football has taken Van Buren alum Jordan Barlow somewhere he never imagined.
“Anyone who knows me, I never had much of an aspiration to travel the globe," Barlow said.
After a record breaking high school career in Arkansas with the Pointers, Barlow played college football, finishing at Southwestern Assemblies of God University in Texas, where he threw for 50 touchdowns in two seasons.
This year, with his college career in the books, Barlow was looking for an opportunity to play professionally.
And that led him to pro ball in, of all places, Germany.
“This is a complete blessing that I had not planned for but I’m very thankful for it," Barlow said.
Barlow is in his first season playing for the Leipzig Kings, one of 12 teams in the European League of Football, a new football league that kicked off in 2021.
“Obviously the goal growing up is to get to the NFL,” Barlow said. “About a year or two ago, I had a coach that had coached in Europe. He was at my college, and so he kind of opened up like ‘hey, check out this league, look at how they’re doing. There are plenty of opportunities outside of the NFL. There’s Canada, Europe, all these other leagues.’”
“He was just like go look at it and see what you think. I was like ‘yeah, sure whatever.’ Then I looked it into it and it happened to work out.”
The league features a few players with Division I college and even NFL experience, but is mainly made up of local European players. As one of only two Americans on a squad with players from over 10 countries, its been an eye opening process playing on such an international team
“You don’t realize how different that is,” Barlow said. “I get to pick people’s brain about ‘how is your culture over there? How does this work, how does that work, how is your school system.”
And through four weeks of the season, Barlow says it’s been a good opportunity both personally and professionally.
“Coach reached out, and I felt like it was an opportunity that I just couldn’t pass up,” Barlow said.
“Chance to travel overseas, the life experience itself was hard to pass up, but then getting to play football at a professional level with some very high level people, I just can’t ask much more as a guy that loves playing football."
Barlow says he's using the experience he's gaining the ELF to hopefully one day help him get into coaching.
Barlow's Kings are coming off their first win of the season, and will be in action again at 8 a.m. on Sunday against the Stuttgart Surge. Games can be streamed at europeanleague.football.