A roundup of recent posts on the FSB News page.

– Apparently Europe’s Champions League (soccer) is coming to its “knockout stage.” I won’t pretend to really understand what that means — or take the time to research it — but I will let you know that some EA Sports video games and other loot are available via ESPN.com’s Soccernet fantasy game.

– Here’s a question: If you were an alien unencumbered by human feelings and biases, how differently might you draft your fantasy baseball team?

– New Event listing: Sports Industry Networking and Career Conference

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Fantasy Sports Ventures has bought a piece of Sports Reference LLC, the company that runs Baseball-Reference.com and other popular sports information sites.

According to the Sports Business Journal report, FSV “paid a low seven-figure sum” for the stake, raising to 15 the number of sites in its Fantasy Players Network in which FSV owns a stake. The network — of which Sports Reference was already part — comprises 370 sites in all. The group of 15 reportedly account for about 25 percent of the network’s total traffic.

“This was a very unique asset where we had the desire and saw an opportunity to get involved at a much deeper level,” said FSV chief executive Chris Russo told SBJ. “We think we can help them grow and continue to build scale. We also hope to use this relationship and build some custom market opportunities for advertisers within the Sports Reference group of sites.”

Sports Reference started in April 2000 with the launch of Baseball-Reference.com by then college math professor Sean Forman. Pro-Football-Reference.com came online in December of that year through the work of fellow math professor Doug Drinen. In April 2004, statistics professor Justin Kubatko launched Basketball-Reference.com, and the three combined under the Sports Reference heading in October of that year.

Two years later, Forman quit teaching to go full time with Sports Reference, which also encompasses Hockey-Reference.com and an Olympics site. Forman told SBJ that the FSV investment will allow the company to go even further.

“We have a number of new areas we’re looking to get into,” Forman said. “We’ve basically been in the big four sports and Olympics, so this investment gives the capital to go pursue that.”

Most significantly, Sports Reference plans to enter the realm of college athletics, a potentially daunting task because of the abundance of teams but also a potential traffic bonanza thanks to the rabidity of college fan bases. The emerging market for fantasy college sports certainly won’t hurt things on that front either.

SBJ reports that Sports Reference’s group of sites already garner about a million unique page views a month, about a tenth of the total unique views for the Fantasy Players Network according to comScore’s December stats.