It’s official. The Fenway Sports Group, headed by Red Sox principal owner John Henry, and Roush Racing have completed their deal giving Fenway Sports Group 50% ownership in Roush Racing. Official announcement of the deal will take place on Valentine’s Day, February 14th at Jackie Robinson Ballpark outside of Daytona, FL. Roush Racing owner, Jack Roush, will continue run the racing operations side of the business. The deal gives Roush the necessary capital to compete with Toyota’s ‘Car of Tomorrow’ and help out with other racing expenses. Given the popularity of NASCAR and the Red Sox in the country, new fans could be introduced to both, giving both entities new exposure in certain areas of the country. Technorati: Fenway Sports Group, Roush Racing, Boston Red Sox, John Henry, Jack Roush, NASCAR

With Spring Training only six days away, it got me to thinking about some of the potential stories that will come up during that time. I think the biggest story will be focused on who will be the closer for the Red Sox. Right now, Joel Pinero is the front runner with Mike Timlin, Craig Hansen, Devern Hansack, and Bryce Cox competing for the spot as well. Another story that may come up is will the Red Sox and Rockies reopen up negotiations about Todd Helton. Helton has publicly said he would not accept any trade offers that come to the Rockies for him over the rest of his contract. This is what Todd Helton had to say about the potential deal to the Denver Post:

“I love everything about Colorado. But there is another aspect to this. Sometimes a fresh start can get some blood pumping for you again. Who was it that said, ‘If you stay in one place for 10 years, you’ve stayed there long enough?’ There is a lot of truth to that. Maybe there were some people getting sick of me within the Rockies, and vice versa.”

Jon Lester’s return from cancer will be another story that will come out of Spring Training. It will be interesting to see where he begins the season and how much the Red Sox will allow to him to do. He has already told the Red Sox not to hold him back. I am sure there will be more stories but I think these will be three of the biggest. And it wouldn’t be Spring Training without a Manny requesting a trade story. Don Orsillo, NESN Red Sox announcer, has agreed to a multi-year extension. It is not know how long he will remain in the booth. This is good news because personally, I enjoy listening to him and the Rem Dawg in the booth, especially when they are trying to find things to say. Or when Denis Leary is in the booth.

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The Red Sox equipment truck will leave Fenway Park on Monday at 1 PM and make its way to the Spring Training complex in Ft. Myers. Also, Daisuke Matsuzaka will report to Ft. Myers, 4 days ahead of when he is supposed to report. The first workout is schedule for February 18th and the first spring training game is on February 28th against the Minnesota Twins. Do you want to be President of Red Sox Nation? Well if you sign up for one of the three packages, you will receive a chance to be elected President of RSN. No more details on this were released by the Red Sox. Here is a look at the three packages courtest of redsox.com. Technorati: Boston Red Sox, Colorado Rockies, Todd Helton, Jon Lester, Daisuke Matsuzaka, NESN, Red Sox Nation, Manny Ramirez

A heartfelt congratulations goes out to Mel Thomas who was named to the CoSIDA/ESPN The Magazine Academic All-District 1 second team. In addition to her 3 point shooting abilities, Thomas sports a 3.4 GPA while majoring in Business. I wonder if her major is really the Business of Making 3 point shots with a Minor in Good Defense. She becomes the 11th Husky all time to be named to the team and it was her first time being named. As you can see it’s not all about basketball for Thomas. This is a great honor for her and the UCONN Women’s Basketball program.

Some fellow Red Sox bloggers have united to chronicle the Top 100 Boston Red Sox players in their storied franchise history.

While I am not one of the people writing, as a Red Sox fan and baseball history buff, I highly recommend you checking out their list. To see the list, head on over to Top 100 Red Sox of all time.

Today, February 7th, is the first day in college football that recruits can send in their letter-of-intents to the school that they plan to play for in 2007. As of 6:30 PM, USC currently has the #1 recruiting class in the country, followed by BCS Champion Florida, Texas, South Carolina, and Tennessee. What does this mean for the University of Connecticut football program? Well, they ended up with the 82nd best recruiting class in the country and were the 7th best out of 8 in the Big East. Latest Update: The top 5 now is Florida, LSU, USC, Texas and Tennessee. UCONN ended up with the 55th best class in the country. To see where your team is ranked, click here. Head Coach Randy Edsall announced that he has received 25 letters of intent from his recruiting efforts for the 2007 season. There are also 4 other recruits, (Tyler Lorenzen, Aaron Bagsby, Jarell Miller, Corey Stringer), who are already enrolled at UCONN and are eligible to participate in spring practice. Here is what Edsall had to say about his incoming class:

“I am very pleased with the efforts of our coaches, players and support staff in helping to land what I consider to be a very fine recruiting class for the University of Connecticut football program. This class fills our needs with student-athletes who fit in with our system. These young men bring a lot of athleticism, character, leadership and speed to our team.”

Of the twenty five signees, only 2 of them are from the state of Connecticut, WR James Nixon (brother of WR Brandon McLean), and DE Marcus Campbell of Bloomfield. Here is a look at the rest of your future Huskies:

*This information comes from the UCONN website. According to Scouts, Inc rankings on espn.com (you have to be an ESPN insider to access the link), Danny Russell and James Nixon received the highest grades of all the recruits (77). Dixon was originally a part of the 2006 recruiting class but didn’t qualify academically and went to prep school. Here is a link to the PDF file.