Agreed. I heard a story that as a high school football player he once threw a football out of the Coliseum. Not 100% sure it is true, but that story always stuck with me.
No one who has ever actually been in the Coliseum could ever imagine anyone even attempting to toss the ol’ oblate spheroid out of it. What Duke actually attempted, and this is well-chronicled and your memory just played a trick on you, is to throw a baseball out. He succeeded: in throwing his arm out.
Never heard the football story BUT Duke did trash his arm out in a 1959(?) contest between he and Don ‘Popeye’ Zimmer about which one of them could possibly throw a baseball completely out of the Coliseum.