Reader Bill Moore was the first to pose the question: Why is the Bell Game called the Bell Game?

He left his question in the comments section of Alexis Terrazas' exciting story about South City's win over El Camino in the much-anticipated annual football game.  Moore runs website All Camino about anything and everything related to the historic road of El Camino Real, and he wondered whether the bell could refer to the bells that mark the way along El Camino.

As it happened, I had asked some students in the stands at the football game that very question, but no one seemed to know.  They knew the trophy was a bell, but they didn't know why.

I promised Bill that I would get to the bottom of the question, and to be frank I thought I could probably figure it out in five minutes with a few phone calls.

But after spending over an hour in the Grand Avenue Library History Room with historian Kathy Kay, my tune had changed.  She worked the phones, calling the high schools and long-time residents.  I pored through old yearbooks to see if I could find a hint.

We figured out that the Bell Game is nearly 50 years old, and as El Camino High School is celebrating its 50^th anniversary this year, El Camino probably started the tradition.  We also learned that the winning school rings the bell after its victory.  I had a lot of fun watching hairstyles change between yearbooks in the 1960s and 1970s, but though they often mentioned who won the game, none of the yearbooks shed any light on our main question: why a bell?

Absent other evidence, we started to think that Bill might be onto something.  If El Camino High School started the tradition, they might have adopted the bell in homage to the bells from California missions that line El Camino Real, which runs from San Diego from Sonoma.

But then Kay found the one man who had all the answers, and we learned how wrong we were.

Robert Keropian was the first principal of El Camino High School, and he held that post for 29 years.  In a phone call last week, he confirmed that he's the person who chose the bell.

"When the school opened, we wanted to develop a little rivalry between the two high schools," he said.  "It's like Stanford-Cal."

Keropian, a former basketball and football coach, liked the Stanford-Cal tradition of passing an axe back and forth between the schools to the winner of the big game.  If the other school wins next year, the axe is returned to that school.

"And so we had to have something to give to the winning school for football.  And so the question was what are we going to do?" Keropian said.  "So we came up with the bell."

But wait a minute.  That doesn't answer the question.  Why a bell?

No reason.  Keropian worked with a trophy company and just liked the look of the bell.

"I designed the bell," he said.  "This is what I wanted.  They custom-made the bell."

To see the bell, try paying a visit to South San Francisco High School.  As Bell Game winners, they are the keepers of the bell until next year.