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NEW ORLEANS — Georgia prided itself over the last decade as one of the big bullies in college football, but on Thursday at the College Football Playoff, the Bulldogs were pushed aside by a bunch of misfits from Notre Dame.

The heartfelt label of “misfits” given by Marcus Freeman for this group of football-obsessed power players and head hunters staked their claim as one of sport’s best with a decisive 23-10 victory at the Sugar Bowl inside the Caesars Superdome. It sends the Irish (13-1) to the semifinals of the CFP, where they’ll play Penn State in the Orange Bowl, and place them one step closer to a long-awaited national championsihp. 

“It’s an honor, you know?” said Freeman, the Irish’s third-year coach. “We want it as bad as our fans want it. But what you want doesn’t matter. It’s what you’re willing to do, and that’s what we’ve got to continue to focus on — the work that it takes to achieve that outcome that we all want so badly.”

It’s that extra work, the extra effort and the mentality to not accept “good enough” that has defined Notre Dame’s rise under the 38-year-old head coach. Notre Dame is a program that transcends the sport, but that interlocking gold “ND” was tarnished by critical losses and misfires in the modern era, which led to ridicule and punchlines.

No one laughed at the Superdome, though some Notre Dame fans — and at least one staffer on the field — were spotted crying tears of joy after the win.

“It’s a great shot in the arm for us, there’s no doubt about that,” said Rev. Robert Dowd, president of the University of Notre Dame.

Georgia (11-3) appeared listless at times, out-maneuvered by the competition and out-coached by the opposing staff. The Bulldogs couldn’t crack 300 yards, and were held scoreless on two trips in the red zone. They failed to slow the Irish’s rushing attack, which picked up 154 yards — all critical in the win, particularly on a clock-draining drive that burned nearly eight minutes late in the fourth quarter.

Bigger goals are on the horizon, but the win at the Sugar Bowl allowed fans to release a long-held sigh after 30 years of struggles: a 10-game losing streak in major bowl games, including an embarrassing 28-point loss to SEC titan Alabama the last time they played for a national title (2013).

“It’s been a while. It’s great. We have the right leader,” Irish defensive coordinator Al Golden said. “I’ve been saying it for three years now: at the right time he’s assembled a great staff. There’s unit cohesion upstairs, there’s unit cohesion downstairs. We’ve got leadership, we have great kids that just want to get better and continuous improvement is what matters in this game. We’re such a better team than we were 116 days ago.”

Ahh, 116 days ago. We did the math: it’s Sept. 8, the day after Notre Dame’s incredible 16-14 upset loss at home against Northern Illinois, a Group of Five team that finished 8-5 and 4-4 in MAC play. 

“We feel like we’ve played a playoff game in every game since the NIU loss, and that’s the mindset [Freeman’s] had in the locker room with our players,” athletics director Pete Bevacqua said as the team celebrated Thursday.

Notre Dame didn’t resemble that team from Sept. 7, when all seemed lost for the Irish. Their defense Thursday was ferocious and might have proven itself as the nation’s best unit. Georgia scored only one touchdown, and the Irish forced two critical turnovers, including a strip sack of quarterback Gunner Stockton that sparked a rare 17-point outburst in a span of only 54 seconds (and required only one offensive play) in the second and third quarters.

“You look at our journey, you look at the ups and downs, you look at how this team is refocused and put in the hard work — and kept the pain and became the misfits,” said Notre Dame linebacker Jack Kiser, who forced a fumble and also recorded one of the Irish’s four sacks. “It’s a lot to be proud of and we’re excited to keep playing.”

After a decade-long narrative dominated by “SEC speed,” the South’s exclusivity on elite athletes and immovable behemoths in the trenches is over. The transfer portal has assured that much, and so has the rise of younger coaches like Freeman (38-years-old) at Notre Dame, Dan Lanning (38) at Oregon and Arizona State’s Kenny Dillingham (34), who all made the CFP. 

It should be no surprise that five transfers lifted the Irish in the Sugar Bowl, too. 

• Quarterback Riley Leonard threw a touchdown, frustrated the Bulldogs’ with his duality as a runner and bled the clock with 80 rushing yards. Leonard transferred from Duke. 
• Kicker Mitch Jeter booted three field goals, including a pair from 47 and 48 yards. Jeter transferred from South Carolina. 
• Receiver Beaux Collins caught Leonard’s touchdown pass, just his third this season. Collins transferred from Clemson. 
• Defensive end RJ Oben sparked the Irish’s crazy 17-0 spurt when he circled the edge of Georgia’s offensive line and hit Stockton’s arm before he could fire the football, forcing a fumble at the 13-yard line with 33 seconds remaining In the first half. Oben transferred from Duke, like Leonard. 
• Jayden Harrison, a special teams force at Marshall, recorded his first kick return touchdown of the season to open second half, the crescendo to the greatest 60 seconds of Notre Dame’s season.

“Amped. I can’t even describe the energy. It was through the roof,” said Harrison, who returned two kicks for TDs last season at Marshall.

Sports are filled with cliches, and it’s difficult to not grow cynical and roll your eyes when coaches speak of togetherness, toughness and work ethic. 

On Thursday, in a game delayed a day by a terrorist attack on Bourbon Street, Notre Dame flipped the script, out-running and out-muscling the Bulldogs. They frustrated the eyes of linebackers, owned the line of scrimmage, and converted in the big moments while their opponent stumbled over their own feet (Georgia was 0 for 8 on third and fourth downs in the second half).

For all intents and purposes, Notre Dame defeated Georgia by force feeding the Bulldogs their own brand of Bully Ball. It also capped an intriguing trend in the first year of the expanded 12-team playoff: all four teams with first-round byes lost their quarterfinal games.

Don’t attempt to weigh the “rest vs. rust” debate at the Sugar Bowl. This isn’t the same Notre Dame team from previous years. They’re stout up front and they have the speed to match.

Their mentality is also quite a bit different.

“It’s normal for the normal person to wake up and just go in and say let’s get my job done and go home,” Freeman said Monday, more than 72 hours before kickoff. “I want our guys to be misfits and find a way to push yourself outside your comfort zone every single day, to look for hard and choose hard every single day. That’s the mindset we as a program have to have. I want misfits. We want to be misfits. We don’t want people to look at us and go, ‘You’re just a normal coach, a normal football player.’ We want to be a little bit of a misfit and embrace that and do the things that misfits do.

“That’s not just one thing. If everybody is doing something, you want to do something harder, do something different. That’s that misfit mentality that we’ve got to keep and we’ve got to be.”

The “misfit” mentality is the genesis of Notre Dame’s aggressiveness on the field. Consider Freeman’s decision to substitute the entire punting team for the offense on fourth down midway through the fourth quarter. It riled up Georgia’s sideline, forcing them to quickly substitute their defense for the punt-return unit. Moments later, Georgia jumped offsides, rewarding Notre Dame with a first down. The Irish held the ball for the next six minutes, effectively freezing the Bulldogs out of a comeback attempt.

“I didn’t want to ‘survive,'” Freeman said of his attitude at halftime with a 13-3 lead. “I think that’s the natural tendency in a big game. You’re up 10 versus a really good team to say ‘let’s survive.’ No, let’s be aggressive.”

The same was the case for the defense, which could have played conservatively after losing Riley Mills, the team’s sacks leader, with a knee injury in the first round of the playoffs.

“That was the mantra all week, from our head coach down,” Golden said. “… We had to do the same thing on defense.”

The Irish blitzed often on third and fourth downs, and it worked practically every time. Golden moved linebacker Jaylen Sneed from spot to spot on third downs, which led to confusion for Stockton.

As much as Notre Dame seems different, the same could be said of Georgia. Top-10 defenses are nothing but vapor of the past. The Bulldogs struggled to stay afloat in the top 30 in many categories. The team trailed seven times at halftime, going 4-3 in those games, the most in Kirby Smart’s nine years leading the program. 

After the game, Smart opened up about the Bulldogs’ struggles, calling it the “toughest year of at least my tenure, easily the toughest year.”

For Notre Dame, it’s the best year in at least three decades, a feat that seemed impossible after the Irish lost in Week 2. They’ve won 13 games, the most in school history, and enter the Orange Bowl on a 12-game winning streak.

“They work hard on and off the field, and that’s really what Notre Dame is all about,” Dowd said. “I’m just very proud of them.”

Farewell, Bullies. Hello, Misfits.

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