A group of investors led by Boston Red Sox owner John Henry has completed a deal to buy a 50 percent stake in the Roush Racing NASCAR team, a person familiar with the negotiations said Friday.

Although team owner Jack Roush is selling half of the team to the Fenway Sports Group, Roush will continue to run the team’s competitive operations, according to the person, who requested anonymity because the deal hasn’t been announced.

Both parties have scheduled a Feb. 14 news conference at Jackie Robinson Ballpark, a minor league facility near Daytona International Speedway.

No word yet on exactly how much Jack got for the 50% stake, but I imagine it’s a goodly sum. As far as the potential fallout from the deal, I doubt it’ll have much immediate impact on the operations or on-track performance of the Rousch cars, as Henry appears content to let Jack continue to run the show (although ol’ Jack will have to find something new to whine about now, as far as not having enough money to both develop a competitive Car of Tomorrow program as well as compete with Toyota and its free-spending ways).

In the long run, I wouldn’t be surprised to see more deals like this happen. It’s becoming more and more common for owners of professional sports franchises to expand their empires into other adjacent sports (with owners and/or investor groups owning MLB, NFL, NBA, and/or NHL teams, in various combinations), and there’s no reason to think that NASCAR would be immune to that.

At a certain scale, professional sports conglomerates start to more closely resemble a media provider more than anything else, and the easiest way for them to increase their profits is to keep expanding outward, bringing to bear their marketing clout to bear in as many arenas as possible.

The hauler, carrying two Nextel Cup race cars, crashed along eastbound Interstate 10 near a U.S. Border Patrol highway checkpoint west of Sierra Blanca. Border Patrol agents say the hauler crashed into a motor home, causing it to hit a tractor trailer, which then hit a second big rig.

One person was taken to an El Paso hospital, about 80 miles west of the crash scene, while three others were taken to area hospitals with minor injuries. Their identities and which vehicle they were in were not immediately available.

Roush, the loudest critic of NASCAR’s decision to allow the Japanese automaker to enter the Nextel Cup series this season, said he’s “preparing myself for siege” on the track and in the boardroom this year.

“I expect to hand Toyota their head over the short term,” Roush said on Wednesday during NASCAR’s preseason media tour.

Roush, who has said in the past that Americans shouldn’t buy foreign cars because it hurts the economy, believes that Toyota’s entry will hurt NASCAR because the automaker will outspend teams affiliated with domestic automakers.

“Nobody’s frightened,” Roush said. “We’re going to go to war with them, and they should give us their best shot.”

To be fair, one of the best things about NASCAR is that crotchety old (and rich) men get to say things like that and there’s no uproar in the media and outcry for him to attend sensitivity training classes and other ridiculous crap like that. Hell, I imagine a goodly chunk of NASCAR fans are nodding their heads right along with him, ready to jump on an anti-aircraft gun and start shooting Japanese Zeros out of the skies.

On the other hand, umm, Jack, did you see Ford’s 2006 annual results that were released yesterday?  Another little American car called called GM isn’t doing so hot these days, either. Deep down in our heart of hearts, most of us racing fans here in the US are indeed rooting for you to beat the snot out of Toyota on the track this year, but winning the larger auto-manufacturing war is looking more and more like a pipe dream.