Barring a surprise, another ticket to the 2016 College Football Playoff has been punched.

With a 41-10 blowout win over Colorado on Friday night, Washington won the Pac-12 and should be one of the four teams selected by the CFP Selection Committee on Sunday.

It wasn't Washington's best performance. Quarterback Jake Browning struggled against one of college football's premier pass defenses with a 9-of-24 passing night, but the ground game and defense took over in a weird game that featured all kinds of twists and turns.

With one of the major conference titles in the books, here's what we learned.

1. Washington should be headed to the playoff: While speaking in certainties is usually a death sentence, we can say with almost complete confidence that Washington will be headed to the playoff. Beating a 10-win, top-10 opponent by 31 points is good no matter how you look at it, and there's no reason to think the Huskies will drop because of the results this weekend. The only thing left to determine for Washington is seeding. As for the Big Ten, it better hope for a Virginia Tech upset over Clemson if it wants to get two teams into the field.

2. The Rose Bowl is up for grabs, however: Beating Colorado by 31 makes may open up the Rose Bowl, though. The Buffs looked like a sure-fire selection to play in Pasadena, California, but now USC could be in the mix. The Trojans were ranked No. 11 last Tuesday, only three spots behind Colorado. The Buffs have one more win than the Trojans but don't have the head-to-head victory. The committee has shown us in the past that it does not necessarily penalize teams heavily for conference title game losses, but this one was significant. Regardless of which team gets the bid out the Pac-12, they could wind up playing the Big Ten champion, which is all sorts of nuts.

3. Colorado picked a bad day to have a bad day: Anyone who wakes up to this score without watching the game will thing Colorado got manhandled. That's not entirely true. While the Buffaloes' offense never got going, there was one important reason: Quarterback Sefo Liufau was hampered by yet another ankle injury. Backup Steven Montez did his best to fill in through the end of the first half, but Liufau was thrust back into duty to start the third quarter. His first pass back was a floater tipped for a pick-six. Colorado threw three picks and defensive back Budda Baker should've had another for the Huskies. Liufau clearly wasn't right, and the Buffs couldn't get anything established.

And then there was this whole crazy touchdown pass by Washington.

The point being, sometimes it's not your night. Colorado's defense played as well as it could given the numerous holes it was forced into, but its inability to stop the run -- the Huskies ran for 265 yards -- set a bad tone early. If only that had been Colorado's sole problem ...

4. Washington showed it made the right coaching hire three years ago: It's been a long road to get back to relevancy for Washington. But there's no doubt hiring Chris Petersen to replace Steve Sarkisian, who left for USC, was an upgrade. The Huskies took a giant leap forward in Year 3 and dismantled most of their opponents. The passing attack was off against the Buffaloes, but the run game and defense stepped up. This is a complete team -- even with key injuries to the linebacker unit -- with some NFL-caliber players on the field. No one should overlook them. And yes, that includes you, Alabama.