Portland Oregon's Ethan Johnson Selects Notre dame

Chad Carlson expected a quiet night at home on Wednesday.
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Johnson felt very comfortable on the Notre Dame campus.What the head coach at Lincoln High School in Portland, Ore., got was a non-stop stream of phone calls about his standout defensive end Ethan Johnson. The 6-foot-4, 266-pound athlete was fresh off a camp stop at Notre Dame that finished with a verbal commitment to the Irish, but Johnson immediately left South Bend for vacation with little confirmation coming directly from the nation's No. 48 overall prospect.That all changed on Thursday morning when Carlson caught up with Johnson about the four-star prospect's decision to choose Notre Dame over USC and Michigan. Johnson, who'll line up as a defensive end in Corwin Brown's 3-4 scheme, is the 17th verbal commitment in Notre Dame's next recruiting class and the fifth from a defensive lineman."Ethan had a good idea about Notre Dame for a long time," Carlson said. "Ethan is the kind of guy who's going to really think about all his decisions. He wanted to make sure that he felt comfortable at Notre Dame with the campus and the type of people there."Johnson met with several of his future teammates during the camp trip but it was the contact with Charlie Weis, Corwin Brown and Jappy Oliver that really kept the ball rolling for Notre Dame. Earlier this year Weis made a spring trip to Portland to meet with Carlson, a sit down that helped convince the high school coach that Notre Dame might be the perfect fit for his star."Coach Weis was unbelievable," Carlson said. "The straight-forwardness and the genuineness of Coach Weis, he'll look you in the eye and you believe what he's telling you. A few other coaches did that, a few didn't. Coach Weis was very impressive. He's more than a football coach and that's important."And for Johnson, Notre Dame offered more than a chance at early playing time. Carlson said every school that courted the defensive end told him he could get on the field quickly, but Notre Dame's academic reputation was what helped push the Irish over the top. Johnson plans to enroll in Notre Dame's business a school."He really liked the academic side and being accepted into the business school where he can focus on that right away," Carlson said. "Ethan thought about academics more than he did about football because that's great at other places too like Michigan, USC, Oregon, Boise State and most every other school in the nation that was looking at him."Carlson said he wasn't surprised by Johnson's ultimate decision or by its timing.In fact, Weis told Carlson that Johnson would get a gut feeling on Notre Dame almost immediately during his camp visit."Weis was right," Carlson said. "From the get-go I felt that Notre Dame was the right place for him to be. He's the right kind of person, a very good person inside. I'm not saying that other teams don't have good people, I just think Notre Dame overall makes the most sense for him."