Bourne Celebrates 20 Years At Madison

HARRISONBURG — To last 20 years in any job is difficult, but to do it in sports is rare.

To do it in college athletics is special.

This month marks two decades since James Madison athletic director Jeff Bourne was hired in Harrisonburg.

Bourne has held his job longer than Bill Belichick has coached the New England Patriots, as long as Kirk Ferentz, the longest tenured coach in the FBS, has been at Iowa and longer than any other athletic director in the Colonial Athletic Association and all but one athletic director at the Power Five level have been at their jobs.

“You want to feel like you’ve made significant impact,” Bourne said. “You want to help the institution, student athletes and coaches get better and the impression of the athletic department to be stronger and better.”

When he reflects, Bourne, who has three years left on his five-year, $257,088-a-year contract that runs through June 30, 2022, can’t help himself as he discusses some of the things he still wants to accomplish.

Just remember when you enjoy that first beer at Bridgeforth Stadium this fall, it was Bourne and his team of administrators who began working on a plan more than a year ago to sell beer. And while you’re sipping it, even though Bourne might be at the game, he’s already thinking about spring sports and the next football season.

The life of a Division I athletic director always involves what’s to come, but since Bourne departed the No. 2 job at Georgia Tech to take the reins at Madison in 1999, it’s been his foresight and leadership aiding the Dukes in success.

“When the job opened, Jeff even looked to make sure it was a quality school,” said Mary Lou Bourne, Jeff’s wife of 37 years and a native of Harrisonburg. “So we knew JMU in 1999 was a quality program, but then you go in with blind faith that it was a good next step and then the rest had to be built. But you could do those things and see the progress along the way. It took years, but it all added up to wanting to stay here and be here.”

Over the last 20 years, JMU has won national championships in football (2004 and 2016) and women’s lacrosse (2018) along with 66 Colonial Athletic Association titles across all sports. Bourne spearheaded facility upgrades like the one to Bridgeforth Stadium and the state-of-the-art, $88-million Atlantic Union Bank Center that’s set to open next year as each team on campus has received a new venue or had significant renovations to their home playing field or court.

“I’m like a young person at Christmastime,” Bourne said about his anticipation of opening the new arena. “I was over yesterday doing a walkthrough of the facility with a group of people and it’s just amazing. To walk down on that lower bowl and to look up into the risers and envision what that’s going to look like in another year and a half, it makes your hair stand up.”

Bourne said the athletic department budget has grown from $11 or $12 million to $48 million over the past 20 years and that the Duke Club featured two donors raising about $100,000 when he first started at the school to a group of donors making more than $2 million in contributions now.

“JMU is a fabulous institution,” New Hampshire athletic director Marty Scarano, a close friend of Bourne and someone who is also celebrating 20 years in his own job this month, said. “I think New Hampshire is a fabulous institution. We have a culture that we want to do the right things. We want classy representation from our staff, coaches and student athletes, and Jeff is the same way.

“I think we’re very similar in that regard in that the culture has to be imposed from the leader on down and when I go to JMU, JMU is on a fabulous run right now. The university is growing, it’s building out and I’m frankly envious because it’s grown to a different level. But it’s one thing to sustain a job and keep it the status quo, but Jeff’s a fierce competitor as I am and we both compete in all of our sports and want to win our respective leagues, but what’s gone on at JMU now is really, really special.”

And the craziest part of it all is Bourne didn’t set out to be a builder of an athletic program — one that’s considered among the best at the mid-major level — or even land a job in college athletics after he graduated from Bridgewater College.

His goal was to run a family CPA firm with Mary Lou instead of competing at opposing firms.

“And then we decided we weren’t going to do that anymore,” Bourne said with a laugh. “So I was going to JMU part-time getting my MBA while I was still working as a CPA, but then she got a chance to go to Virginia Tech and got a great position there, so we pulled up roots and moved to Blacksburg.”

Mary Lou said: “We just wanted something else and we wanted to change. I see that more and more with this generation, but we were pretty early in that stage of making a conscious choice to do that something else. Jeff lasted four seasons in public accounting and I lasted one. And to us it was a joke. We didn’t see ourselves in opposing or competing firms. Everybody else did, but those were just our jobs right out of college.

“But I had an opportunity to work as a controller at Bridgewater College and being young, I was like, ‘I’ll do that.’ And that’s how the path started. Then of course at Virginia Tech when we were there, Jeff got into athletics because it was quite serendipitous.”

Mary Lou said Jeff was moved from internal audit at Virginia Tech to athletics when the school needed someone with an accounting background. From there, Bourne climbed the ladder within the department while getting along with and learning from former Hokies vice president Minnis Ridenour and former athletic directors Dutch Baughman and David Braine, before following Braine to Georgia Tech.

“Had it not been for the three of those gentlemen, I’d probably be somewhere else today,” Bourne said. “Those three were all very influential in my career as I look at university or athletic administrators. I learned a great deal from them and then getting around [former JMU athletic director] Dean Ehlers and working with what he had built was a pretty fascinating to me.”

Editor's Note: This is the first story in a four-story series on Jeff Bourne's 20 years as athletic director at James Madison.