SAN DIEGO -- President Barack Obama, the nation's basketball-fan-in-chief, will have the seat of his choice at the Carrier Classic hoops game on Veterans Day on the flight deck of the USS Carl Vinson, the aircraft carrier that buried Osama bin Laden at sea.

The White House announced Thursday that Obama has accepted an invitation to attend the Nov. 11 matchup between North Carolina and Michigan State, the first college basketball game on an active flat top.

The Carl Vinson and its sailors have attracted considerable attention since early May, when the carrier conducted bin Laden's burial at sea after he was killed by Navy SEALs in a raid ordered by Obama.

It'll be an impossible ticket, except for the lucky 7,000 or so who will be granted permission to come aboard the 1,092-foot, nuclear-powered carrier. Most of the tickets will go to active military personnel. Tickets won't be sold to the public.