NFBC Champion Profile - Phil Dussault

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Tom Kessenich
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NFBC Champion Profile - Phil Dussault

Post by Tom Kessenich » Mon Dec 13, 2021 10:03 am

When the 2021 baseball season began, Phil Dussault had a simple, singular goal in mind when he began mapping out his NFBC plans. He certainly wanted to do well. Everyone does.

Wouldn’t it be great to win the Main Event?

Absolutely.

Bet it would be fun to win the Auction Championship, wouldn’t it?

No doubt.

That grand prize in the RotoWire Online Championship looks mighty appealing too, doesn’t it?

Yes, it does.

Like everyone who takes part in the NFBC, Phil had his eyes on the prize … scratch that … eyes on the prizes. But he certainly wasn’t bold enough to think that he could do what no one in the history of this illustrious event had ever done before.

But when the dust had settled in October and the season had come to an end, there was Phil Dussault having put together a season unlike any other in the history of the NFBC. There was Phil Dussault from Terrebonne, Quebec having won not one but two national contests and very nearly a third. It was a truly remarkable season, and it certainly was more than anything he could have ever imagined.

“It was amazing,” said Dussault, who made NFBC history in 2021 by winning the Main Event, the Auction Championship and finishing second in the RotoWire Online Championship. “When the season started, my goal was to win any overall title. I played in the Main Event, Draft Champions, Online Championship and Auction Championship as always, but also the Cutline and Diamond Challenge.

“I really wanted to win an overall title last year, so I gave myself as many chances as possible to win two in the same year. It was just a dream come true.”

And a season the likes we may never see again.

Dussault topped the record 645 teams in the Main Event and won the $150,000 grand prize by leading that contest for the final 14 weeks of the season. He also had two other teams finish in the Top 21 in the overall standings, finishing third and 21st overall. All three of those teams finished first in their respective leagues, giving him six league championships in the last two years and seven league titles in the past three seasons.

His total winnings for the 2021 season came to $324,000.

“The last month or so was very stressful up until about five days left,” he said. “I knew I was going to win the Main Event and was very likely going to win the Auction Championship.

“For the last week my attention was mainly on the Online Championship as I had an outside chance at catching (eventual champion) Chris Fessler. On the last Friday of the season, I made a big comeback and at some point, I had a realistic chance of catching him but then his team hit something like five or six home runs within 20 minutes and it was over.”

Second place netted him $30,000 for the overall finish so that ended up being a fairly substantial consolation prize.

The Main Event is the NFBC’s signature contest and Dussault truly made it his own in 2021. He won his Online league title in impressive fashion, snaring a record 145 points in the standings which represents 96.7 percent of the possible points available.

He took over the top spot in the overall standings late in June, but it wasn’t until August that he began to sense he had the type of team that could make a real run at the $150,000 grand prize and secure a spot in fantasy baseball immortality.

“I was so far behind in Saves but I knew if I had to find some closers, I had a very good chance at winning,” he said.

Dussault worked the Waiver Wire aggressively and that literally paid off. Among his biggest pickups in FAAB were Kyle Finnegan, Dylan Floro, Joe Barlow and Alex Colome. But Dussault said it was a veteran hitter who provided the biggest bang for the buck on his Main Event championship squad.

“The closers I picked up were big, but other than that the biggest (pickup) was Joey Votto for $28,” he said. “I had him on a number of teams already, but many teams dropped him in early May when he got hurt. I had him on my bench for three weeks waiting for him to get healthy but hen he hit 31 home runs in the final four months.”

In addition to his Waiver Wire gems, there were also some Draft Day moves that paid off in a big way as well.

“I’ve always been someone who drafts starting pitching early because I believe in my ability to find hitters in Rounds 5-20,” Dussault said. “In a few my of my drafts, though, starters that I really liked like Joe Musgrove and Kevin Gausman were slipping so I ended up drafting more pitching than I initially planned and it worked out very well.”

Dussault won the Auction Championship in unique fashion. He couldn't even come to New York to compete in the auctions there because of travel restrictions due to Covid so he had Rob DiPietro as his live proxy and gave him instructions through an ear piece.

Yet he still dominated the $2,500 league against an all-star cast of live participants, winning the league title with 131.5 points (87.67%), while winning the overall title with 1,043 points (86.9%).

"I just want to thank Rob for being my proxy for the auction in New York," Dussault said. "Doing the auction over Zoom was one of the most stressful things I’ve ever done.

"There are already a lot of things to keep track of during an auction but it’s even tougher when you’re not there in person and have to worry about hearing the names and bids properly. It worked out really well, though, and Rob made that possible."

Everything worked out really well last season. The end result was two national championships, several Top 10 finishes and more than $320,000 in total earnings in a single season it’s safe to say the plan worked out extremely well. All of that from a simple goal of trying to win one national title in 2021.

Now all that’s left for Phil Dussault is figuring out what to do with all the money he won.

“I haven’t done much (with the prize winnings) yet,” the 33-year-old father of three said. “If I’d won this 10 years ago, I’d be halfway around the world, but with the kids and Covid it’s making traveling a lot more difficult. So far all we’ve done is buy a new couch and washing machine. But hopefully a first-class trip to Europe in the near future.”
Tom Kessenich
Manager of High Stakes Fantasy Games, SportsHub Technologies
Twitter - @TomKessenich

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