Floyds
Knobs man has used electric football game to accurately predict seven of the
last eight Super Bowl winners
In a 1979 matchup, Earl Campbell runs over a Cincinnati
Bengal on his way to scoring a touchdown
By Jed Wilcox,
THG Sports
Friends used to make fun
of Floyds Knobs resident K.C. Duke’s obsession with electric football, an
outdated game that reached its peak in popularity in the 1980s where players
run, pass, and kick their plastic teams down a vibrating metal football field
with hopes of outscoring their opponent.
Little did they know that
Duke’s passion would turn into a gold mine, earning him hundreds of thousands of
dollars last year.
The 38-year-old Duke, a
drawing teacher at Borden
High School, has played electric football since the late 70’s. He got his first
board with two sets of players for Christmas one year as a middle schooler, and
instantly fell in love with the game’s hard-hitting action.
Over a period of years,
Duke purchased hundreds of sets of players, so he could field the starters and
backups for every NFL franchise. To make the game even more realistic, Duke
still repaints each team every year if they alter their uniforms so that his
electric players match real NFL players and changes their numbers to those of a
team’s regulars. If an NFL team trades a player, Duke trades and repaints that
player with their new uniform in his own league.
Eight years ago, Duke
decided to change things up and instead of playing teams week to week during the
regular NFL season, he would play his entire electric season in July to see
which team won the Super Bowl, and then compare the results with those of the
real NFL season.
Duke is getting the troops ready for battle
He thought it was mere
coincidence when the Green Bay Packers won both his electric and the real Super
Bowl XXXI. The only difference was the electric Packers beat the Kansas City
Chiefs, while the NFL team beat the New England Patriots.
Duke repeated his actions
in 1998 and 1999 and came up with the same result; the Denver Broncos were the
Super Bowl Champions of both leagues. This time he was able to determine
Denver’s opponents for those two games—Green Bay and Atlanta.
As a matter of fact,
Duke’s electric league has accurately determined the participating teams and the
winner of that year’s Super Bowl every year except one. In his electric league,
the St. Louis Rams won Super Bowl XXXVI over the Tennessee Titans 34-17 while
the New England Patriots beat the Rams 20-17 in real life. “I don’t know how
that happened. The Patriots were clearly better than the Rams that year,” says
Duke.
Due to his success at
determining the Super Bowl champion in the preseason the last several years,
Duke decided to take the risk of a lifetime last August: he maxed out his credit
cards and took out a second mortgage to place a single bet—that the New England
Patriots would defeat the Carolina Panthers in Super Bowl XXXVIII.
Duke’s wife Doris nearly
divorced him for putting the family in financial jeopardy and his friends and
family thought he had finally lost his mind, but Duke’s electric league
predictions came through for him once again, with New England winning 32-29.
Duke has used his gambling winnings to build the home of his
dreams
Duke took home a cool
$626,000 after taxes. “You got to risk money to make money,” said Duke, “but I
would be lying if I said I wasn’t sweating bullets the entire game. I didn’t
think it would be that close.”
I tried to get Duke to
reveal who he believed was going to win this year’s big game, but he remained
tight-lipped. “I have already bet on the game, and I don’t want a flood of bets
screwing with the odds. All I will say is ‘think AFC’,” said Duke with devilish
grin.
To
contact K.C. Duke with questions about electric football, e-mail him at
kcduke1@yahoo.com
