This Ten-Year-Old Won A Science Fair By 'Exposing' Tom Brady Once And For All

The controversial Brady-based experiment came to the ten-year-old — a student at Millcreek Elementary in Lexington — when he entered the science fair early in 2019. Later, his project caught the eye of the website NFL Draft Diamonds, and a reporter asked him why he was gunning for Brady. Ace responded, “Because I hate Tom Brady. He’s been accused of cheating before; I want him to be caught.”

But how did the snarky science experiment of a kid from Lexington, KY, get noticed by the American public? Well, his dad popped some photos of Ace’s project on Facebook, and then the NFL Draft Diamonds Facebook page shared the photos. From there, the story spread through the online football community like wildfire.

But what did Ace have against Tom Brady? The former New England Patriots star is famed for his clean-cut image. As Larry Stone, a reporter for the newspaper the Seattle Times put it, Brady’s “too handsome, too clean-cut, too aw-shucks,” while TV station Sky News dubbed him Tom “Terrific.” And few would deny he’s a good-looking, well-presented fella. He’s won awards for it!

And there’s the matter of his being a really good football player. At the very least, he’s been considered one of the sport’s better athletes and among the best quarterbacks. He specialized in his reading of the game, proving quick on his feet and supremely able to adapt to the game around him. Still, his legend status is contested among some — like ten-year-old Ace.

But as the Washington Post’s Colbert I. King pointed out in 2015, looking good on the exterior is “not synonymous with wholesomeness and honor.” There are, as King notes, no end to bad guys with handsome faces. But was that why ten-year-old Ace had beef with Brady?

Or did Ace's grudge with Brady have to do with his record number of wins? Whether he’s the greatest player or not, he’s achieved the most wins in the Super Bowl, including leading the Patriots to six triumphs. In four such wins, he scooped the MVP award, and what’s more, he has been voted the NFL’s overall MVP no fewer than three times. Not bad for a pretty boy!

As a teenager, it hadn’t been certain that the California native would even pick football as a career choice. He was also a fine baseballer, good enough to go pro. But he preferred university, where he was picked for the school’s team in football. At first, he couldn’t get a start, but when he did, he showed what he was all about, eventually winning an Orange Bowl with the University of Michigan.

The same was true with Brady’s pro career. He only got one game in 2000, but when he stepped in for the injured Drew Bledsoe, he led the Patriots to 11 wins from 14 in the regular season. He went on to scoop his first MVP in the Pats’ triumph in the 2001 Super Bowl. Fine work for a beginner, right?

From there, Brady didn’t look back, cementing himself at the peak of the game. Over and over, he proved a true big-game competitor. In 2016 and 2017 he set and reset the Super Bowl record for yards thrown, topping 500 in the latter year. Even though he was now entering his fifth decade, he still had the golden arm, with his ninth Super Bowl appearance coming in 2018.

But all good things come to an end. The Brady magic seemed to be disappearing in 2019 as the player, now in his 40s, saw the team that he had always played for slide out of contention. When the Patriots crashed out at the first hurdle in the playoffs, it looked like the end of Brady’s reign as king of the QBs.

In March 2020 Brady announced that he’d be moving on. He told the New England fans on social media, “My children were born and raised here, and you always embraced this California kid as one of your own. I love your commitment and loyalty to your teams, and winning for our city means more than you will ever know.”

It turned out that Brady had shifted to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and the then-43-year-old superstar continued the fairytale. He took the Bucs all the way to the Super Bowl, only the fourth QB to ever do so with two different teams. And he didn’t just get to the Bowl. He once more ended up with a champion’s ring.

Away from the field, Brady also struck gold with his marriage: he got hitched to supermodel Gisele Bündchen in 2009, forming one of the greatest power couples in the celebrity world. A source close to the two told Us Weekly in 2020 that the pair had coped “by being... honest with one another and by committing to each other and prioritizing their family.”

However, this all came crashing down in 2022. Brady finally announced his retirement from football in February, allowing him to spend more time with his family. But just 40 days later, he changed his mind and let it be known that he would be returning to the field for the Buccaneers. It seems that this created an irreconcilable divide in his marriage — and he and Gisele finalized their divorce in October.

Given that Ace’s project scrutinized Brady and the Patriots, it’s reasonable for us to ask about the team that he led over most of his career. They’re famous for what’s called “The Patriot Way.” What is that? Just another way of saying “winning a lot”? Or a description of their playing style? The players’ knack of staying dignified in the media? Or – as some suggested – a tendency to color outside the lines at least a little bit?

Well, Cam Newton, who played for the Patriots in 2020, had no doubts about what it was. On the I Am Athlete podcast in 2021, he said, “It’s mental stamina. It’s hard to explain, but that’s the definition. You have to have as much energy as you had for the first day of pads as the last day of pads. You’re going to practice. You’ve got to be mentally tough, and you have to be physically tough.”

Well, that doesn’t sound too bad, or on its own a reason to dislike the team. But Ace also had personal motivations for not loving the Patriots. That’s because his aunt had become a Bostonite, and her cousins are huge Pats fans. So he had plenty of incentive to do a project that had more than a little to say about the team’s icon Brady.

Although they’re based a fair way from his Kentucky home, Ace is a huge fan of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers — and his science fair project was exhibited before Brady joined the team, of course. But although he lives far away, Ace does get to some Bucs games. In fact, when he went to see the team as a birthday treat, he got to hang out with Jameis Winston, his favorite player.

On top of team rivalry, Ace had another compelling reason for his investigation of Brady. It’s because Brady isn’t the best pick in his favorite video game. He told ESPN in 2020, “He’s really bad in Madden, and that’s like my number one game. I’m used to having a quarterback that throws far, like Jameis [Winston], and Tom Brady, he’s more consistent, but he doesn’t really throw that deep.”

So when the school announced the upcoming science fair, Ace’s father, Christopher, saw a perfect way to get a reluctant student involved. “He’s not a big fan of school,” his dad told CBS News in 2019. But he might have been surprised at how keen the youngster became about the project.

So, what was Ace’s project? It was nothing less than a grand scheme to show that Tom Brady was a cheater. The schoolboy was reminding everyone of the 2014 Deflategate scandal. The allegation there was that the Patriots were deliberately using partly deflated footballs to gain an advantage. The youngster set out to prove that there really was something to gain by using flattened balls.

Ace laid out his hypothesis clearly. It read, “Through various testing measures of different weights (psi-pounds per square inch) of footballs, we should find that the underinflated footballs provide a competitive advantage in a game.” But how could he prove that? His solution to the problem of proving it was ingenious.

Ace performed a series of experiments, employing his sister and his mom as his sidekicks. They tossed footballs that were deflated by various amounts. Then he measured how far they had gone and worked out the average distance. His conclusion: the more deflated a football was, the farther it would fly. So Brady had enjoyed an advantage in Deflategate.

And having come up with proof, Ace was ready to rub it in. He adorned his project poster with all sorts of juicy digs at Brady. In one picture Brady was weeping; in another he was pulling a goofy face. To top it off, the youngster included his own picture, with him wearing a football uniform with a big tick, while Brady got an X.

Ace confirmed to the NFL Draft Diamonds website in 2019 that the whole thing was driven by hatred for the purportedly clean-cut Patriot star, but he had more to say. He revealed that he didn’t even believe Brady was the best QB in history. Nope, in his view the “best ever” tag belonged to another footballing legend: Joe Montana.

The website went on to ask Ace whether he had any message that he’d like to share with Brady. He certainly did. He said, “Gimme some of your money. You don’t deserve it.” Well, Brady certainly has plenty. He’s reported to be worth $250 million. But does he deserve it, or was the glitter of his career tarnished by Deflategate?

What was that all about? Well, back in 2014 it was alleged that Brady had called for the footballs that he’d be throwing against the Indianapolis Colts in a championship game to be deflated. We won’t get too technical about how it’s supposed to have worked, but it involved conning the officials by manipulating the balls’ temperature.

The rules stated that each team’s offense would use its own footballs. Brady himself had called for the laws of the game to allow quarterbacks to use balls that suited their style, instead of just allowing the home team to supply the game balls. So the Patriots were able to use balls that were checked before the game but not during it, and they gained a big win over the Colts.

The NFL actually investigated the accusation that the Patriots had not properly inflated their balls in the playoffs in 2014. Brady slammed the accusations as “ridiculous,” but there was some suspicious camera footage that raised questions. The league hired lawyer Ted Wells to look into the whole affair, though it wasn’t until months later that the NFL issued a report.

Not everyone welcomed the report, which had wording that was a little wishy-washy and seemed not to accept that the NFL had responsibility, or so the fans thought. But in May 2015 the outcome was that the NFL said it believed Brady was in on the alleged ball deflation. It suspended him for four games.

For their part, the Patriots were landed with a million-dollar fine and had to give up their pick from the first round of the 2016 draft and another from 2017’s fourth round. NFL bigwig Troy Vincent wrote to Brady on May 11, 2015, saying, “Your actions as set forth in the report clearly constitute conduct detrimental to the integrity of and public confidence in the game of professional football.”

The media had a field day with the outcome. Even before the NFL had reported, some outlets were calling for head coach Bill Belichick to be banned for a period, and even for the Patriots to be thrown out of the Super Bowl. One reporter was even upset that the NFL put off reporting until the Super Bowl was over.

Retired player Troy Aikman went one further. He considered Deflategate a tremendous scandal and called for Belichick to be much more harshly punished. But not everyone agreed with that view of it. It was described by one person as a “phony scandal” and by another as “the dumbest sports scandal ever.”

Debate continued for some time afterwards, until people were so sick of it that the media would talk about “Deflategate fatigue.” That didn’t stop it from featuring in several comedy shows and even as a feature of a university course. And some fans even tried to take the NFL to court to get their draft picks back.

In April 2016 Dan Shaughnessy of The Boston Globe summed it up, “Bottom line: the Patriots were doing it. They had a system of deflating footballs after the balls were inspected by officials. Any agenda-less person who reads the Wells Report would come away with no other conclusion. The texts were unexplainable.”

So how did things work out for Ace? Well, his project triumphed at the school’s science fair, and won a spot at the district-level event. But there was a downside – or as it turned out, an upside. Not long after he “proved” that Brady was a cheater, the player signed to the football fan’s beloved Buccaneers.

When ESPN asked him about Deflategate in April 2020 Ace had somewhat backed away from his Brady-hating stance. He said, “I don’t think that Tom Brady was all in it. But Bill Belichick, I think he made up the plan, and then Tom Brady went through with it. I think it was more on Bill Belichick than Tom Brady. But Tom Brady, he has a bigger name.”

Ace’s mom found the whole thing hilarious. She told ESPN, “It was just to make Ace interested in science and to do something he would actually enjoy. I think it’s funny. But I do believe both my husband and my son are kind of excited. Now they’re just trying to work on their apology.”

Ace was willing to forgive, though. He said, “I’ll give him a shot all right. And if he starts winning games? Woooooo! I’m gonna be bragggginnnnng. People at school, they’re all like, ‘Your team sucks’ and all that stuff. Ima come back at ’em, ‘Now what team sucks?’ Well, they don’t really make fun of me. It’s just kind of like a joke. But I’m pretty sure my cousins are gonna make fun of me about it.” Well, as it turned out, the joke was on them, as Brady delivered in spades!