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And now, the latest example of a trend in sports event management — a college basketball game scheduled for Veterans Day on the aircraft carrier used to bury Osama bin Laden at sea.

Sports teams are apparently convinced that the one thing better than a home game is a game at a place that is not a home to sports at all.

Ten years ago, in a simpler time for staging sporting events, Michigan State held an outdoor hockey game at its football stadium. The event, called the Cold War, drew 74,544 fans, a record for hockey at the time. What seemed like a novelty was actually a precursor: to professional basketball in a tennis stadium and professional tennis on a helipad, to college football in baseball stadiums and an NBA game contested outdoors.

“You’re seeing an evolution,” said Jerry Jones, the owner of the Dallas Cowboys. “Whether it’s a multipurpose stadium like ours, or a basketball game on an aircraft carrier, you’re elevating the awareness of the venue. You’re creating that ‘wow factor’ beyond the game itself.”

Jones built his $1.2 billion sports palace for more than his beloved Cowboys. He envisioned Cowboys Stadium as a giant stage, easy to configure for events as varied as the NBA All-Star Game, football and women’s professional bowling, which it hosted last week.

Team and league officials and event organizers are capitalizing on the notion that the site alone can make a game distinctive — and attract more viewers. The bigger (championship college basketball inside football stadiums), or more bizarre (a squash tournament at Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan), the better.

“This is an emerging trend,” said Tim Romani, the president of the Icon Venue Group and builder of $3 billion worth of sports stadiums. “It’s about being creative with your stadium, or other venues. We talked with a group in Germany about putting something on a cruise ship.”

The success of the NFL’s Winter Classic provided something of a blueprint. It started with a photograph, one John Collins saw hanging in several offices when he arrived at the NHL in 2006. The photograph showed an outdoor hockey game, a winter sport back amid the elements, and Collins said, “How come we haven’t done that?”

The game, played annually on New Year’s Day, has taken place in NFL teams’ stadiums and Major League Baseball stadiums. Since it started, Collins said, representatives from dozens of stadiums in North America — even those in cities without hockey teams — have asked about hosting.

Long before the Winter Classic, Michigan State held its outdoor hockey game. The man behind it was Mark Hollis, an athletics administrator who created the 2003 BasketBowl, in which the Spartans played Kentucky in basketball at Ford Field, the home of the Detroit Lions.

Even then, Hollis was kicking around an idea. He wanted to play a basketball game on an aircraft carrier.

This year, Michigan State and ESPN entered into discussions with the Navy, along with the Morale Entertainment Foundation, which arranges events for troops. Nick Dawson, the director of programming at ESPN, said his first thought was, “How in the heck can we pull this off?”

Mike Whalen of Morale Entertainment said his company committed more than $1 million to the project, but the money might be easier than the logistics. If the game, between Michigan State and North Carolina on Nov. 11 (11/11/11), is orchestrated as expected, organizers must account for sun, wind and inclement weather — not exactly the usual issues for a college basketball game.

Two courts will be constructed on the USS Carl Vinson, which carried Al Qaeda leader Bin Laden’s body to the North Arabian Sea soon after he was killed on May 2 in Pakistan. One of the courts will be on the flight deck, its stands wrapped in fabric to block wind; the other will be built on the hangar deck and used in the event of rain.

The ship will be moored off San Diego and positioned so the sun will hover above the court and not shine behind either basket. Spectators who attend — there will be seating for about 7,000 — will have their names printed on their tickets as a security measure.

Lance Hatfield, a teaching assistant professor of sports venue management at the University of Missouri, said that future developments would come more from pro sports than colleges. There are fewer decision makers and less red tape in pro sports and pro teams are more inclined to follow successful trends, he said.

“The potential is limitless,” Hatfield said. “But ultimately, the focus has to be on the game itself. People will watch a basketball game on an aircraft carrier for five to 10 minutes, but for them to stay, the game better be quality as well. If not, you might as well put a windmill in front of the 18th hole at Augusta National.”

Speaking of golf, the astronaut Alan Shepard hit golf balls on the moon in 1971. Forty years later, the moon is still an untapped sports site, but what has not happened yet in space will soon take place at sea.

The New York Times