Jeeps With Ducks & Not Giving a Fu*k

Rubber ducks on Jeeps used to be a harmless little surprise. Now it’s a full-blown social ritual and I can’t stop staring at dashboards packed with plastic like they’re merit badges. I break down what “Jeep ducking” actually is.

Then I pivot hard into sports and the business side of fandom. Detroit just landed a PWHL team, and as a hockey lifer I’ve got mixed feelings: I want the game to grow, but I also want people to be honest about viewership and what it takes for a professional women’s hockey league to be financially sustainable. That leads into a blunt look at sports league profitability, including the WNBA money conversation, subsidies, and why “deserves” doesn’t automatically turn into revenue.

I also pull the lens wider and what happens when cities build big projects for teams that most people can’t name. To wrap it up, I hit the current state of Detroit pro teams, give credit where it’s due, and finish with a stacked month of theater plans and upcoming movies.

If you like sharp takes with real numbers and a little chaos, subscribe, share the show with a friend, and leave a review. What trend or sports take do you want me to cook next?

Transcript

Cold Open And A Rant

SPEAKER_00 0:30

What is up, people? You know what time it is? It is time for cooking with Yes, with your boy Jared, right here in the studio, ready to pop off on this new episode. And when I say pop off, I have got to pop off. I have got to address something right off the bat right here. What is with the ducks on people's Jeeps? I I I seriously had to look it up because I had no idea everywhere you go, you see Jeeps now. Jeeps used to be these kind of vehicles where you wouldn't you wouldn't really see many of them. However, now you see Jeeps everywhere you go. And everybody had these has these rubber ducks uh on their dashboard. It looks absolutely ridiculous. And I'm I'm like, what is this about? It's it's simply something called duck duck jeep or jeep ducking. So if you own a Jeep, you see another Jeep in a parking lot, instead of waving, uh someone leaves like a small rubber duck as a surprise, and it's like saying, hey, nice Jeep, or or uh I appreciate you, you're part of the community, or just some weird shit. That's what it is. It's it's some weird shit. And honestly, yes, it it looks absolutely ridiculous. You buy a Jeep and you're suddenly now in a secret society where grown adults are leaving tiny rubber ducks on each other's dashboards, like it's some kind of emotional toll booth. I I have no idea. You no longer just say, nice ride or wave to one another like you used to do back in the day with jeeps. You commit a full-on espionage operation when you see a Jeep in a parking lot. You sneak up on it like you're in a fast in the furious deleted scene, and you plan a duck and you vanish. And the and the best part is the Jeep owners that they find it and they look at it and they go, they go, ah yes, I have been ducked. I am now emotionally validated by the duck council. Look, I respect Jeep culture. I I truly do. My first car was a Jeep Wrangler back in like 1998,

Wrangler Nostalgia And Jeep Rules

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1997. My very first vehicle was a Jeep Wrangler, TJ. In this Jeep, oh, it was it was hot, okay? And and don't kid yourself, your boy looked good in this Jeep, okay? Especially with the drop top down. My hair when I had more of it, blowing in the wind. I mean, I had hair like Andrew Keegan back in the day. You don't know who Andrew Keegan is? Look him up. I had hair like Andrew Keegan blowing in the wind. It looked like a like a beautiful mane on a unicorn as as it jumped through the stars. That's what my hair looked like when my drop top was off on that Jeep. The Jeep. So I respect Jeeps, okay? I love Jeep Wranglers. Let's let's get that specific too. Jeep Wranglers. I'm seeing these ducks on on people's Jeep compasses. No, you don't get to do that, okay? Like Jeep Compasses, or even Cherokees for that matter, and Cherokees are an OG, okay? So maybe I'll give you a pass for the Jeep Cherokee duck. Maybe, probably not. But the Jeep Compasses and all these other Jeeps that are out there, you don't get to throw ducks on your Jeeps, okay? The whole thing is the Jeep Wrangler because, like I said, back in the day, people did not have Jeep Wranglers. When I had my Jeep, it was when you passed somebody or you saw somebody, you gave them a little bit of a wave. That's what it was. It became to get a little annoying as you would see more Jeeps get on the road. I had my Jeep for about five years. During the first two years, there was barely any Jeeps on the road. And yes, you would get a lot of compliments. I would get a lot of compliments on this Jeep. Rightly so. It was a beautiful, beautiful vehicle. And nobody really had them. Then they just mass-produced them. Jeeps were everywhere, and uh g getting to wave to every other car on the road, it became annoying. So somewhere this Jeep thing came into play. And it's strange, okay? I mean, you sneak up in a parking lot like a goblin and deposit a bath toy on someone else's vehicle. It's not normal behavior, okay? I would say this is what happens when culture refuses to have hobbies that involve therapy. Think about it. You buy a $50,000 off-road

When Ducks Become A Dashboard Problem

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vehicle designed for mountains, mud, and survival, and the community response is But what if we added ducks? Not cool ducks, not rare ducks, not collectible artisan ducks, but just yellow rubber ducks, netbag ducks, ducks, gas station ducks, bulk ducks. And it it it it escalates. First it's one duck and it's like, oh, nice jeep. Then it's five ducks. Oh man, this guy's got respect. He's got five ducks on his dashboard. And some people have them facing outward. The the ducks are looking out the windshield. Some people have them facing inward, and when you get into this jeep, you got 27 ducks on your dashboard staring at you like you owe them money or something. At some point, your car stops being an actual vehicle and becomes a floating daycare for rubber poultry. And and let's not kid anyone, okay? Because nobody talks about the psychological shift that happens when you get ducked. These dudes think they're the the kings. They just got ducked. Jeep owners act calm about it inside. They're like, I've been chosen by the duck council. Chosen for what? No one knows. There's no structure, no rules, just ducks, and you can't escape it. If you are a Jeep owner, congratulations. You're now in a system where parking your car correctly may result in strangers tagging you like you're in a Pokemon game. I mean, could you imagine this with any other vehicle or context? Could you imagine having a pickup truck and someone tapes like a miniature cowboy hat to your mirror and you're like legally required to roll down your window and say yeehaw at every single stoplight for another person that's driving a truck or tip your cap like a cowboy? It would not be accepted in any other industry. Jeep owners out here building duck-based peer pressure ecosystems and calling it a community? Just stop. Please just stop. Everyone's gonna be like, oh man, they're just having fun. You're such a hater. You're right, it is. They're they are just having fun. I'm uh but that doesn't mean I I can't look at them with the side eye when you have 32 ducks lined up on your dashboard. And how do you get them to stay there? Does every single one of these ducks have like a piece of velcro uh underneath it in order to keep it there? It better because you're gonna cause yourself to have an accident as soon as you take a sharp corner and all your ducks go flying and hitting you and your passenger in the face. Look, people love it. All right, they collect them, they display them like trophies, which means somewhere out there there is an individual with 40 ducks on their dashboard, and it says, I survived 14 parking lots. And I got emotionally validated by these ducks. We are one step away from someone starting duck insurance. Okay, because you know what's coming. Nothing says rugged off-road adventure vehicle like a mandatory rubber poultry diplomacy. So that's where I stand on the ducks. And again, you can call me a hater. You can say I this is a terrible take. Um, but you're wrong. It looks ridiculous. Uh another thing is I will say this about Jeeps. They and I love Jeeps. They were it was my first vehicle. I did everything I could to have a Jeep become my first car. My parents, awesome, helped me get that first Jeep, that that first vehicle that I truly wanted. Love them for life because of it. And and I got that Jeep, and and it was everything that I hoped for and more. I will say that Jeeps have become a very what appears to be female-based vehicle now. I feel like they are more geared towards females. There's not anything necessarily wrong with that. I just don't know when it occurred. I see many, many more Jeeps with female drivers than I do male drivers now. Now, if you're a female driver and you have some ducks on your dashboard, okay. But if you're a dude and you got ducks all over your dashboard, no. Okay? No, just stop. Full stop right there. Quit it. You lose it. If there's if there's anything. You know, I talk about crying in movies, and you could take my man card. This is ten times worse than that. Okay. You lose your man card, you lose every card you have in your wallet. We're taking them out, we're throwing them straight into the trash. You lose every card, okay? So that's where I'm at. That's where it's at with the Jeep Ducks. Get rid of them. Stop it, please. Now this will segue into something else that I'm that I'm going to uh complain about or have a hot take on that some people might not agree with. If you're if you're watching any of the news, especially locally uh where I am based, which is Detroit, Detroit has just now gotten a

Detroit Gets A PWHL Team

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PWHL team, which is a professional women's hockey league team. So uh everybody's just uh they're in the news, it's it's it's everywhere. Uh now, Michigan, especially Detroit, this area is it's hockey crazy. I grew up in this area, I've played hockey my whole life, I've said it in multiple episodes of this podcast. I am a hockey demon. It is it is everything I love about sports is hockey, hockey, hockey. I can watch it all day long. It's to me the best sport on the planet, especially playoff hockey, which is on right now. And if you're not watching it, you're crazy. So flip it on if you get a chance. But when it comes to this PWHL team that is being brought to Detroit, I am on the side of it is just bound to fail. Now, people will say, well, this PWHL team came here last year and they sold a bunch of tickets at LCA, Little Caesars Arena, and they almost sold it out. Well, no, they didn't. But that was a special occasion. This PWHL team, it came here, it wanted to see what the crowd would be like, and again, it being Detroit, I'm sure there's a lot of young girls or women that play hockey around here and and they they like to see it out on the ice, they want something they can believe in. They I have no problem with the aspect of women's hockey being brought uh to the forefront. I have no problem with it. What I'm going to tell you is it's not going to succeed. Okay? And you can hate this take all you want, but I will come at you with numbers proving why it will not succeed. And here we go again where you'll say, This is misogynistic. You hate women. You hate women's sports. No, no. The truth is people just don't watch it. You can try all you want to keep shoving it down people's throats. People don't watch it. It's not a product that people care about. Okay? Look, I watched the women's USA Olympics win gold. It was awesome. A lot of people watched it. It was a special thing that happened watching the women's hockey team win gold, especially by beating Canada. Hell yeah. Same thing with men's hockey. But we're sticking to women's here. But the truth is, it does not garner enough of a following to be financially profitable. And they keep trying to shove these sports down people's throats to make them profitable, but nobody cares and nobody watches. This this PWHL team will pull in a crowd for a little bit of time, because it'll be a new exciting thing that's at Little Caesars Arena, okay? But if you think you're gonna sell that arena out, you're out of your goddamn mind. Okay? It'll never happen. The goddamn Pistons game, game one of the Pistons, second round playoffs had empty seats at LCA. The Detroit Pistons are in the playoffs, there were empty seats at LCA. You think you're gonna sell tickets to a women's hockey league? I also understand that the tickets will be significantly cheaper, but that's also the problem. They can't sell tickets for a respectable amount because nobody would go then. So the tickets will have to be significantly cheaper, but it it those ticket sales, the the profit from the ticket sales or any of the promotional aspects of the game, um, any of the apparel, it will not be enough to pull you out of the hole financially. I I don't mean to be the bad guy here. Do people watch women's sports? Absolutely. There is a small crowd of people that watch women's sports, whether it's the WNBA or the PWHL or any of the other women's sports that are out there. Uh, I'll tell you a women's sport that I do watch and I actually enjoy. I like watching softball. As crazy as that sounds, I like watching women's softball. When it's on ESPN and the playoffs are going on, I'm turning on, I'm turning on women's softball. I enjoy watching it. So I'm not some misogynistic dude who does not like all women's sports. What I'm saying is, financially, it does not work. And the fact that they continue to shove women's sports down everyone's throat and say, here, watch this, watch this, watch this, it still doesn't work. As a matter of fact, it just gets more annoying and annoying. ESPN got rid of Sunday night baseball and picked up an all-women's layout for Sunday night, and it is tanking. It gets no views whatsoever. None. The viewership on ESPN is is in the absolute dumps because they got rid of Sunday night baseball and they are showing all women's sports on Sunday night. What what I want to say is good for the PWHL for for expanding. But I don't want to hear how this is the greatest thing since pants with pockets to come to Detroit. Because, yeah, for the first couple months or a season or two, it it might pull in some crowds. Some crowds. Let me be very, very clear on that. Okay.

The Money Problem In Women’s Leagues

SPEAKER_00 14:58

It will not financially make it. There is no way for it to do that. It has nothing to do with me not liking women's sports. I I can watch certain women's sports at certain times. The thing is, the the mass crowd of people that bring in viewers, they don't watch it. I I I personally do not watch women's sports, and really nobody else does. Yes, women play sports, whether it's baseball, soccer, hockey, basketball. The WNBA, all this bullshit about the WNBA where they wanted to make the same amount of money as the men. I mean, how ridiculous is that? They're they're asking for the they're asking for the same amount of money as the men, right? The WNBA loses close to $40 million a year. I will repeat that. The WNBA loses up to $40 million a year. Compare that to the NBA. The NBA makes $12 billion a year. But the women want to be paid and they want to be flown on charter flights. And you want to know what they got their charter flights. The NBA is actually subsidizing the WNBA. The NBA gives the WNBA over $15 million a year annually to help them, and they are still losing money hand over fist. They lose $30 to 40 million yearly in the WNBA. And now they're losing more because they wanted chartered flights. They want to be treated like the men. The truth is you don't generate the money or the popularity that the men have. Now that's old news. The WNBA argued, argued, and argued, and then the NBA was like, oh, we gotta, we gotta do something. We gotta help them out. So we'll give them a little bit of money. And then they're subsidizing the WMBA with $15 million a year. It still doesn't help. It's it the $15 million is is nothing. It will never dig the WMBA out of the hole that it's in. And the WMBA will never be a truly successful market. Okay. So to get off the WMBA, I'm gonna give you into the PWHL. All right. The PWHL, they lose tens of millions of dollars per year. Tens of millions of dollars. They lose up to 30 to 50 million a year. Now you'll say, well, this is all an investment. It is an investment. But why would you invest in it? It loses more money every single year than the year before it. It doesn't gain any money. So I don't understand why we're why we're trying to expand these leagues into something that they're never going to be. We just look at millions and millions of dollars get pissed away by these financial institutions that back failing sports. Now here's that curveball I'm gonna throw you to show you that it's not just about women's sports. Detroit has a soccer team.

Detroit City FC And Stadium Losses

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Did you know that? Did you know that Detroit City FC is a soccer team based in Detroit? You probably didn't. Because nobody fucking cares. Nobody goes to see it. They're actually building a stadium right now in Detroit to house Detroit City FC. And let me break this down for you. Here's the the breakdown of the Detroit City FC and how much money they lose. In 2021, Detroit City FC lost 1.2 million. 2022, 2.9 million. 2023, 2.7 million. 2024, $3.21 million loss. They are running at a $4 million a year loss, which they say is it's actually pretty good. I mean, we're only losing $4 million. That's actually pretty good compared to the rest of the league. What? Listen, quit trying to shove stupid sports that nobody watches down our throats. We are in America, and no matter what people say about it, soccer will not garner the fans it needs in order to be successful. Okay? This is not England. It is not overseas. Soccer is a massive, massive sport. But not here. Not in the USA. And it will never be. Okay? It just won't. So I bite the bullet on the NHL. I tell everyone how much I love the NHL and how much I wish it was a bigger sport. I mean, the NHL used to shoot 30 years ago, be on top of the world. It was making a ton of money. But at the same time, now they got bad leadership and it's in the tank. But I'm not gonna sit here and act like it's not. I'm not gonna sit here and act like the sport is wildly successful when it's not. And that's what we're getting out of these teams that are being brought to Detroit. Like people want to see them and they don't. You're gonna build this soccer stadium for Detroit City FC, and in five years, that thing is gonna be vacant. It's either gonna be completely vacant with weeds growing up everywhere, or it's gonna be used as like some concert hall for some B plus axe to go out there and sell. And then chances are, even with that happening, it'll end up being vacant, like a lot of shit that's going on in Detroit. So no, I'm not here for it. And like I said, in everyone can enjoy the fact that this women's hockey league is being brought to the city of Detroit. Go ahead and enjoy it. Okay, I I I have zero, zero excitement for a sport that a very limited amount of individuals are going to watch. So stop it. Just stop with the WNBA deserves this or deserves that, the PWHL needs to expand, let's keep bringing soccer into the United States. It's like nobody wants to say the quiet part out loud, and I'm the only one. There is no audience for it. Okay? And the small audience that is there for it will never get to a point where it will be a successful business to make money, but yet they will still pile and dump money into it. And a lot of times it's your taxpayer money that's going to build this fucking stadium in the city of Detroit. They'll sit there and say it's not. Oh, what do you think? They're just gonna build a building and not have the people that are there paying for it? You think some billionaire is gonna foot all the money for it? Hell no. So you're gonna be the one that's paying for this big ass atrocity of a building that is gonna end up being vacant years from now, sitting there being an eyesore, and it won't get torn down for 20 years. If then, then it'll just be this big pile of rubble that you have to look at for another five or six years before they clear it out, and it's just an empty lot again. I will say this about the women's hockey team there is a solid chance, regardless of how I feel about the Actual business aspect of the PWHL. There's a solid chance that the women's hockey team would have a playoff victory in LCA before the Red Wings

Red Wings Frustration Plus Team Naming

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do, unless the Red Wings pull their head out of their ass and start bringing some actual talent onto the squad so they can make the fucking playoffs. Steve Eiserman has got to get that shit straightened out and ready to go. Because next year, if you're not in the playoffs, and and you can't say next year, if you're not in the playoffs, Steve Eiserman is gone. It's not it's never gonna happen. You can sit here and whine and complain about Steve Eiserman all you want. The dude's not going anywhere. It has been s just unacceptable the fact that the Red Wings have not gotten into the playoffs since he's been here. But he's not going anywhere. So he needs to figure that out. And to have a women's team come into here and possibly make the playoffs or win something of significance before the actual team that the stadium was built for, okay? The actual team, the Detroit Red Wings, Little Caesars Arena was built for the Detroit Red Wings, okay? And they have not done anything in that building. So I need to give my props to the Detroit Pistons. They're the only team right now that's taking care of any business whatsoever. They finally won a playoff series. They won a playoff game. Just they won a playoff game inside of LCA. It's the first playoff game won inside of Little Caesars Arena in the since the inception of the building almost 10 years ago. Completely unacceptable. Completely unacceptable. But I want to thank the Detroit Pistons for actually giving me something to watch right now. And I'm not a big NBA fan. I'm not a big Detroit Pistons fan. I I love all sports, but I know where my loyalty lies. You know, I'm a Red Wings guy, uh a Tigers guy, and a Lions guy well before I'm a Pistons guy. But I gotta give my flowers to the Pistons because right now they're at least giving me a reason to invite some buddies over, uh, have a smoke some meats and watch the game and have a good time. I don't you can't do you sure as shit can't do it with the Tigers right now. The Tigers don't even have a rotation that they can put out there that can hit the ball or even catch one for that matter. Every single person on the Tigers is in the grave at the moment. Hopefully they can dig themselves out of that, but it's not looking good for the Tigers at the moment. Thank you to the Pistons for taking care of some business. And and chances are this PWHL hockey team, whatever they decide to name it, and no, do not name it the Vipers. Okay? The Vipers was an absolute classic hockey team. Okay, you don't just get to take the name of the men's Vipers hockey team and give it to the women's. All right, come up with an original name. That's another thing. Are you just gonna start pulling off of the the old hockey league that was here? You're not even going to be original about it. Everyone's like, oh, just call them the Vipers. No. Either, either be yourself and be original when you come in, or don't do it at all. You don't need to be stealing uh past names from hockey teams and giving it to the women's teams. As a matter of fact, if I was uh a woman hockey player, I would be like, no, I don't want to be the vipers. I want to be our own product, our own thing. Can't we just be the women's hockey team and come up with our own original name instead of stealing one from an old men's team that was there?

Upcoming Movies And Theater Plans

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That's how I would feel about the whole situation. So come up with an original name for the women's hockey team at least. And listen, I'll be cheering the women's hockey team on. I'll flip the game on, but I'm not gonna act like it's gonna be pulling in some viewership that's gonna that's gonna make some money or make a difference because it's it's not gonna do it. You can hate on me all you want, you can say that I'm an asshole, you can say that I'm this and I'm that. What I'm doing is I'm giving you the facts, I'm giving you the numbers, and the numbers don't lie. If you don't like the numbers, there's nothing that I can do for you. Now I've ranted enough in this episode on some subjects, but before I leave you, we have four straight weeks coming up of just A plus content that's gonna be dropping in the theaters, hopefully. So this weekend, I'm gonna be going to see Mortal Kombat 2, of course. I'm not expecting some wildly uh groundbreaking film out of Mortal Kombat 2, okay? I want to see some fatalities, I want to see some entertainment. I don't need to see some fleshed-out script and some amazing storytelling. I want to be entertained with Mortal Kombat 2, and I'm pretty confident that that's what I'll get in the theater. After Mortal Kombat 2, we have one of my most anticipated movies of the year dropping in two weeks, which is Obsession. Obsession comes out May 15th. I cannot wait to see this film. I have been hype on it since I've seen that it's coming out. It's got amazing reviews. I want to say it's at 96 or 98% on Rotten Tomatoes. You can't always go off of what Rotten Tomatoes critics are saying, obviously. I mean, they hated the MJ movie, and the MJ movie to me was was the best movie of the year so far. But when you see a movie get good reviews, and it's also getting good reviews from the audience who has seen it already, that

Where To Follow And Share

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gives me a lot of confidence that I'm going to walk up into this theater and out of the theater uh highly pleased with what I see with Obsession. After Obsession, we have Passenger that drops, and after passenger, we have the backrooms. The month of May is stacked. I cannot wait to be sitting in the theater every single weekend for these films. I will be coming at you with reviews for every single one. Be on the lookout for those. I'm done cooking with gas because gas is not free. It is astronomical, so I have to stop. Thank you. If if any of you like this content, please share. Follow me on social media. Again, you can get at me at the Cooking With Gas Podcast on Facebook, Cooking With Gas Podcast on Instagram, at CWG Podcast on X. Have a great rest of your week, an awesome weekend. As always, I appreciate every single one of you. Thank you for listening. Again, give this episode a share if you can. I appreciate it. Appreciate you all. Oh, almost forgot. I get out of the clink, out of Facebook jail, May 12th. That's coming up quick. So uh be prepared for that too. For your boy to be free and back on the streets. This has been Cooking with Gas with Jared. Thank you again. Peace out.