FORTUNE: How Bomani Jones scored a hit HBO show and stayed at ESPN 20 years after flunking out of graduate school

‘This was never the plan’

“Getting knocked down sometimes isn’t because there’s something wrong with you. I think that that’s an important thing that a lot of people need to hear,” Jones added. He said he’s learned to think of the stops in his career “in the context of what they were, not the context of how they ended.”