Your gut instinct is correct. That's because, in this example, you are scaling the mass of the object (giving it huge inertia), while keeping its size constant, hence leaving unchanged the magnitude of the forces exerted on it by air friction. As a very rough estimation, the work performed by the forces that lead to a change in angle will be identical. But due to the larger inertia, that work will result in a much smaller change in orientation.
What would your gut tell you if now that same steel football rotating at 1M rpm was also propelled at an initial speed of mach 1.5, yielding 3 or 4 minutes of flight?