For $80,000 a second, they could at least make it good. But the only 2005 Super Bowl ads worth watching are the ones that didn’t run.

Several of the spots, which FOX sold for a record $2.4 million per 30 seconds, never made it on the air – some were too negative, others too risqu. So with all the good stuff swept under the rug, most of this year’s ads were car commercials, movie previews and self-parodies.

FOX blocked a campaign that would have fueled the beer war between Miller and Anheuser-Busch, asserting that Miller’s anti-Bud ads were too negative to show during the game. Anheuser-Busch is the Super Bowl’s exclusive beer sponsor and, with five minutes of airtime, the biggest advertising customer.

Those five minutes were mostly mediocre Bud Light ads, one of which filled the first post-kickoff spot. As if to say, ‘Hey, dude, we’re extreme,’ that ad featured a reluctant skydiver who took the plunge after his pilot dove out of the plane in pursuit of a dropped Bud Light bottle. (It is physically impossible for him to catch up to that bottle, unless Spider-Man is somehow involved.)

Miller, a distant second to Anheuser-Busch in the domestic beer market, still ran a few spots during the pre-game show and tried to purchase local airtime, but the brewery was effectively locked out of advertising to the nation’s largest audience.

So, new Super Bowl rule No. 1: no competing with our sponsors. Next on the list: no fun of any kind.

Anheuser-Busch pulled one of its ads because it harkened back to Janet Jackson’s nipple-baring extravaganza, the root of all this self-censorship. The spot, which would have been far and away the funniest of the game, showed a frustrated Jackson throwing down her outfit a few minutes before halftime. Then a backstage employee grabbed a frosty Bud Light and tore the bosom of her costume to open the bottle. Let’s just say he didn’t have much time to fix the damage.

Too soon, Bud Light. Too soon.

In a more reasonable move, Ford pulled an ad about a priest’s lust for the new Lincoln Mark LT. The priest found a key to the new SUV in the collection box and ogled it in the parking lot for a few awkward moments before its owner – and his small daughter – showed up to claim the vehicle. The scene cuts to the priest adding the letters L and T to the new message on the marquee board: ‘LUST.’ Not really funny, but definitely weird.

The worst repercussion of the priest’s banishment was that Ford filled the gaps with its awful Mustang spot. In the ad, a police car pulls up behind a red convertible waiting at a green light in a barren tundra. For some reason the cop sees nothing weird about this, so he waits behind the car and honks his horn before finally investigating. He finds the driver frozen solid with a look of euphoria preserved on his icy face.

The message: we’re not even putting this car on the market until spring, because our consumers are so dumb they’d drive it around the Artic Circle.

The funny ads that made it on the air were all parodies of themselves. In other words, Super Bowl ads suck so much that the only creativity comes when they remind you of their suckiness.

Fedex Kinko’s hilariously demonstrates the top 10 necessities for a good Super Bowl ad. Among them: groin kicks, Burt Reynolds and several instances of talking, dancing bears. And the ad for a domain registrar called GoDaddy.com takes place at a Federal Communications Commission hearing, where a busty coed pleads for permission to be on TV.

The most ridiculous self-parody came from Budweiser – in a throwback to last year’s donkey-becomes-a-Clydesdale ad, Bud introduces several other animals (from giraffe to pig) with the same goal. But it makes no sense if you don’t have last year’s ad at the front of your mind, and even then it’s barely funny.

So mark 2005 down as the beginning of the end for Super Bowl advertising. Almost everyone who bought a spot wasted their money, and the rampant censorship was more embarrassing than the banned ads could ever be.

ROB HOWARD IS AN ADVERTISING AND HISTORY MAJOR AND THE EDITOR IN CHIEF OF THE DAILY ORANGE. E-MAIL HIM ROHO@DAI

Published on February 6, 2005 at 12:00 pm