"It's a joke" would be a reasonable explanation if this were Grantland.com's Power Rankings or some idiot's blog.
These are the Power Rankings of the official league website. It is just as inappropriate as if they had the second place team listed as the Cheatriots.
I stand by
1) it was a joke
2) purpose of the joke was to generate page hits
3) it was successful at generating page hits.
Your agruement seems to go along the lines of it wasn't a funny joke and it was an inappropreate joke given the page it was on therefore it was not a joke, nor intended to be a joke.
That logic fails. It is still a joke. Not a good joke, but still a joke.