CLG Hires Jonathan McDaniel as New LCS General Manager

Counter Logic Gaming has named Jonathan McDaniel as the new general manager of their LCS League of Legends team, the North American esports organization announced Tuesday.

The news was made official nearly four days after CLG announced they had relieved Daniel "Tafo" Lee of his GM duties on Oct. 22.

McDaniel makes the move over to CLG after serving nearly three years as an assistant general manager for Golden Guardians, where he had reportedly been focused on finding and developing League of Legends talent.

Prior to his work at GG, McDaniel spent two years with Cloud9 in various capacities, including team management, coach and analyst, as well as player development and scouting initiative leader.

"Jonathon has had a great career in the League of Legends space," Head of CLG Greg Kim said in a press release, "from scouting to coaching, and ultimately leading to jobs in the front office. I’ve always admired his work and I’m excited to have him take this next step of leading CLG’s League of Legends program back to the ultimate goal of competing for championships."

The move comes at a time in which CLG is coming off of a disappointing two-year run — finishing in the bottom two of the LCS standings four splits in a row.

"When I started as a fan of League of Legends in 2011," McDaniel said, "there were many legacy organizations that I was able to watch grow from humble beginnings with CLG being one of those marquee franchises. All these years later, I'm honored to join CLG and my goal is to build a League of Legends program that our fans can look forward to growing year over year and make them proud."

As showcased on social media via Twitter and Reddit, the pulse of the move early on seems to be that having McDaniel in the front office might just be exactly what CLG needs in order to build success on the rift long term.