The ticket lost twice. The legs went 15-5.

Both tickets lost. I want to get that out of the way, because the ticket is the thing with the big number on it and the big number is why anybody looks. Week 6, ten legs at plus 52563, three legs missed. Week 7, ten legs at plus 53822, two legs missed. A ten-leg parlay needs all ten, so that's two zeroes, and if you bet the ticket you're down two units. I bet the ticket. I'm down two units.

Now look at the legs.

Week 6 went 7 and 3. Week 7 went 8 and 2. That's 15 of 20 player props, every one of them a college prop the desk paired with its own side on the game, every one locked the Friday before at the price on the sheet, mostly minus 114. If you'd skipped the parlay and just bet the twenty legs straight, a unit each, you're up a little over eight units in two weeks. On college player props. The things everybody tells you not to bet.

Here's what the two weeks actually looked like, because the pattern is the story.

Sixteen of the twenty legs were unders. Rushing yards, passing yards, one receiving. That's not an accident. When the desk takes a side and then goes looking for the prop that rides it, the prop that agrees with a side is very often somebody's yards staying under a number. Cutter Boley under 246.5 passing in Week 6, landed 189. Boley again in Week 7, under 215.5, landed 124. Tyrell Henry under 38.5 receiving in Wisconsin-UCLA, he caught four yards. Four.

And then the one I'll be telling people about in March. Marcel Reed, Texas A&M at Missouri, under 27.5 rushing yards. He finished with negative eighteen. Negative. The sacks count against him, so he started at zero and went the wrong way all afternoon, and I was on the couch rooting for a man to get tackled behind the line, which is a thing I did not know about myself.

The misses, since I count those too. Week 6: Drew Mestemaker went over 286.5 passing, Micah Ford ran for 48 on a 29.5 under, and CJ Baxter ran for 123 on a 52.5 under, which was never close either. Week 7: Dylan Edwards got 57 on a 62.5 over, five and a half yards short, and Isaac Wilson threw for 256 against a 182.5 under. Those two are the ticket. Eight of ten and it pays nothing, and that's the deal you signed up for when you bet ten legs.

So what do you do with this. I'm not telling you to stop betting the ticket. The ticket is the fun part. It's the reason the thing has a name, and one of these Saturdays it hits and that's a whole different conversation. But the ticket is ten correlated coin flips stacked on each other, and the legs are the part the desk is actually good at. Twenty picks, fifteen winners, graded off the box score, every one of them on a page you can go check.

The next one locks Friday evening. The legs are on the page before the ticket is. I'd look at the legs.