North Central College Athletics

“Serendipitous” is the word Luther Selbo ’68 keeps returning to when describing his initial route to North Central College. His desire for a well-rounded educational experience and a recommendation from a high school coach led to him joining the Cardinals sight-unseen and wound up impacting the rest of his life.

Selbo initially accepted an athletic scholarship to play football at the University of Wyoming, but left after one semester hoping to of find an opportunity to establish a better balance between athletics and academics.

“I thought about walking on at Wisconsin or Iowa State,” he said. “My high school coach, Gil Krueger, had come to North Central as an assistant coach. He called my father and said, ‘Why don’t you come down here?’ I didn’t know where North Central College was or anything, but my father said it might be a good place for me, so we went. It was sort of by chance, but it worked out well.”

Selbo’s arrival in Naperville ushered in a period of success in the passing game that would not be rivaled in the Cardinals’ football program for nearly 40 years. Selbo threw for 1,335 yards, a school record at the time, and eight touchdowns as a junior in 1966 before establishing records that would stand for a generation as a senior. The 1967 season saw Selbo establish North Central records for pass completions (163), pass attempts (306), passing yards (1,928) and touchdowns (16), which helped him land an Honorable Mention selection to the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) Little All-America Team that year. Each of Selbo’s records remained intact until the 2005 season, and he remains in the top 10 in each category.

Such a pass-heavy approach was an uncommon strategy during an era when the running game was far more prominent in most college programs, but Selbo and a talented group of receivers led the Cardinals’ coaching staff to tailor its attack.

“In the conference at the time, there were people who could  throw the ball pretty well, but most of the game around the country was run-oriented,” he said. “I could throw the football and we had several guys who could catch it. Sometimes, it was like playing touch football in a sandlot, just making it up as we went along.”

Selbo’s senior year also saw him branch out in another capacity, as he assumed duties as the sports editor of the campus newspaper, the North Central Chronicle. “For the three years I was at North Central, I was married and lived off campus,” he said. “I wasn’t involved in a lot of student life, but I liked to write and had written some articles about other things. This was an opportunity to be a part of campus outside of football, so when it came available I was glad to do it. I wrote a little about football, but I mostly wrote about other things through the course of the year. It was a lot of fun.”

Selbo’s lofty passing numbers soon caught the eye of several professional scouts, who began contacting him soon after the 1967 season was complete. A surprise visit to Selbo’s home one evening led to him becoming one of a select few Cardinals to compete in football at the professional level. “I had received a lot of letters and phone calls from some of the  teams in the National Football League about tryouts,” Selbo recalled. “One night, one of the assistant coaches from the Winnipeg Blue Bombers of the Canadian Football League came and knocked on my door, and asked me if I was interested in signing with them. “We went out to dinner, and I signed  the contract and reported to Winnipeg in June. The whole negotiation process took about 15 minutes.”

Selbo played one season as the Blue Bombers’ backup quarterback before calling an end to his career, which yielded lifelong dividends in the form of the educational experience he had initially sought. “It was the best thing that ever happened to me and I ended up there just by accident,” he said. “I’m grateful every day that it happened and I got a  tremendous education at North Central from great teachers. It was a phenomenal place to go to school.”