Alabama and Michigan State were, at one time, scheduled to play a home-and-home series.

The teams were set to face each other in Tuscaloosa (2016) and East Lansing (2017) before the Tide abruptly canceled those plans in 2013.

Now that the Tide and Spartans are set to meet in the College Football Playoff, that decision is being examined again this week, mostly from the Michigan State media.

Initially, an Alabama spokesman blamed uncertainty with the SEC schedule — the conference was mulling a 9-game schedule at the time — but on Tuesday, coach Nick Saban gave a different explanation.

“For business reasons, we have played neutral-site games to start the season,” Saban said, according to the Lansing State Journal. “And when you play a home-and-home – which we played Penn State home-and-home a few years ago — when you play at home you do really well (financially), when you play away you don’t do very well. When you play a neutral-site (game), you do very well every year.

“We wanted to try to play the series, instead of home-and-home, at neutral sites. And we had other opportunities to play other teams at neutral sites. So from a business perspective, our administration chose to do that. It was certainly nothing personal. And not that it wouldn’t have been a great series, I think it would have been.”

Asked about the decision by Alabama, Michigan State linebacker Riley Bullough offered a diplomatic answer, contending that such choices are above his pay grade and that he’s only thinking about playing the Tide in Thursday night’s national semifinal.

MSU athletic director Mark Hollis was a little more pointed last week: “They wanted a neutral-site game and now they’ve got a neutral-site game.”

Alabama has opened the season with a neutral-site game against another FBS team every year since 2011, including Wisconsin earlier this year.

It’s not as if Bama is avoiding strong competition. Instead of facing Michigan State, the Tide will play USC at AT&T Stadium (Arlington, Texas) to open 2016 and Florida State in the remade Georgia Dome (Atlanta) at the start of 2017.