CHARLOTTE — Notre Dame is one win away from a long-awaited national championship victory, and the man who helped set the foundation for the program to reach the pinnacle of the sport is rooting like crazy for the Irish … even if most of their fans are still sour over how he exited the program three years ago.

Brian Kelly never won a national championship at Notre Dame, but the LSU coach is a firm believer the program can end its 36-year drought Monday night against Ohio State in the College Football Playoff National Championship. 

“I’m happy for all those guys, I pull for them,” Kelly told CBS Sports as he exited an American Football Coaches Association meeting Tuesday in Charlotte. “A lot of the guys there that are on both sides of the ball, I recruited. Obviously I want to see those guys win it all, and I think they’re in a great position. Totally excited for those guys.”

Criticism has followed Kelly at every turn since he shocked the college football world by leaving Notre Dame for LSU in November 2021. His abrupt departure came only weeks after he became Notre Dame’s all-time wins leader. His 12-year reign atop one of the more prestigious programs in the country pushed the fervent fan base into an uproar, particularly when he stirred the echoes when he said he desired “to be in an environment where I have the resources to win a national championship.”

Nearly three years later, Kelly believes fans and media misinterpreted his words.

“They’re selling it the way they want to sell it,” he told CBS Sports. “Why do you leave Notre Dame? You leave Notre Dame because you’re taking another challenge. I took Notre Dame to championships. It’s just the way you want to twist it: ‘You only leave Notre Dame to go win a championship.’ I wasn’t leaving Notre Dame because I couldn’t win a championship. You can win championships at Notre Dame, but I chose another path because I wanted a different challenge.”

Kelly was 113-40 at Notre Dame but was 1-7 against AP top-five teams in those 12 seasons. His successor, Marcus Freeman, is 3-2 against top-five teams — including two wins in the College Football Playoff — in three seasons.

Indeed, that challenge has proven difficult in the SEC, which Kelly once compared to the American League East, arguably the toughest division in MLB. Kelly is 29-11 in three seasons at LSU, which includes a pair of 10-win seasons and two four-loss records. He led the Tigers to an appearance in the SEC Championship Game in his first season, but he has not yet appeared in the CFP and he failed to reach 10 wins for the first time in eight years this fall.

Meanwhile, Freeman has propelled Notre Dame to the most wins in a single season (14) and is on the edge of glory after three short seasons leading the Irish. Notre Dame has not won a national title since 1988, but Freeman can become the third, third-year coach in program history to hoist the trophy Monday with a win against the Buckeyes.

Kelly pushed Notre Dame into the championship hunt multiple times, winning 11 or more games in four seasons. The high point came in his third year in 2021 with his first and only appearance in the BCS Championship Game, which the Irish lost to Alabama in a 42-14 blowout.

Kelly was hired at LSU on a 10-year, $95 million contract on Nov. 30, 2021. Among several qualms at Notre Dame, he told the Associated Press in April 2022 he was unhappy with the slow progress on a new football facility.

“I felt like I did everything that I could at Notre Dame and they felt like they did everything they could do for me,” he said at the time. “I felt like we had both got to a point where this is what they could do, right? This is what I did. And we couldn’t get past that. OK? And so here we are.”

Three days after Kelly left for LSU, Freeman was promoted from defensive coordinator to head coach at Notre Dame.