Matt Barkley had a rough senior season. And it's too bad, because he performed well most of the time. The only issue was that Barkley was often performing his best when the rest of his team was not, as Lane Kiffin has pointed out.

In fact, 2012's Barkley had the highest quarterback rating for a college football passer whose team trailed by 15 or more points in all of the mighty cfbstats.com's six-year database.

Here's a list of the best-performing college football quarterbacks under these dire circumstances since 2007. Tragic heroes, all of them.

The sample size is minuscule for most, but it's okay to have fun with numbers.

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