SOUTH BEND, Ind. — The sentiment summed up the last 37 hours of Notre Dame football succinctly.

“So that video had a little different response from yesterday’s, huh?” said a program source not long after Tommy Rees told his players that he was staying with the Irish.

Notre Dame scored its second win over its old coach in as many days on Wednesday night when Rees chose to remain in South Bend over following Brian Kelly to LSU, turning down an offer that would have made him the highest-paid offensive coordinator in the SEC, sources told The Athletic. Not long after the move was announced, The Athletic’s Bruce Feldman reported defensive coordinator Marcus Freeman was expected to become the next Irish head coach.

Rees’ message to his players, delivered a little after 8 p.m. and tweeted by the program at 8:29, came one-and-a-half days after Kelly’s awkward exit speech at 7 a.m. Tuesday — a speech that, a source told The Athletic on Wednesday, was even more uncomfortable than the leaked video of the exchange had let on. 

Kelly, out of the clip’s shot, chose to take the long route out of the Guglielmino Athletics Complex’s auditorium, walking a long flight of stairs to the second floor while passing his silent players and not making eye contact — the final scene of a meeting that turned out to be a gross miscalculation of how the ex-coach felt his players would respond to him leaving.