Hey all, I'm new here, and decided to join because I have a problem that maybe you guys/gals can give me a clue about.

I recently bought a copy of Paperboy at a flea market. I cleaned the contacts as usual (cartridge, contacts, etc are in good shape), place it in my NES, and turned it on. The game loads fine, only problem is, no controls will work...  The number 1 controller has no response. It only seems to go to the menu screen when I hit the select button on the number 2 controller (but yet wont select one or two players). Other than that, no buttons respond. All of my other games work just fine. It appears to be a problem with the Paperboy game itself, but I've never seen this before. Anyone else with a similar experience? Is there any way to fix it?

Yeah, try that, and maybe go ahead and replace your 72 pin while you are in there.  I recently had an issue with Color Dreams and Camerica games. I had to go in and disable my lockout chip..  Your issue is different though.   Pull the 72 pin off, clean the system board contacts, replace the 72 pin, and of course make sure the game itself is clean.  Clean it again even if you think its clean enough.