I've seen people ask about loading RouterOS on small SBCs like RaspberyPi. I'm interested in doing the opposite. I want to know if I can load an ARM Linux distro onto a Routerboard router like the CCR1016-12G or RB1100AHx4 Dude Edition.

The purpose is to load an ARM Linux distro and then run ntopng to monitor and log network traffic on several networks. Specifically, connecting "receive only" Ethernet connections to several of the Routerboard ports. To monitor three networks I need six ethernet ports (one port for tx portion, one for rx portion). You can't hack an interface that lacks a transmit wire in the cable.

ntopng "reassembles" the traffic and flows so it makes sense.

In the case of the CCR1016-12G 16 cores and 2G of ram should be plenty. Maybe it has M.2 ports internally for some local storage capacity?

Am I crazy, or will CCR1016-12G or RB1100AHx4 Dude Edition take a Linux OS load?

CCR is not a good platform for linux, the CPU is a TILE architecture chip and linux kernel discontinued support for it.
There is very little documentation about it also.
You may have better luck with other MikroTik routers with more conventional architecture CPUs.