SOME SUPER ADS WERE SUPER BAD.

Byline: David Kronke Television Writer

Given how slowly the Internet operates on some computers and how frequently America Online arbitrarily logs you off, you might not finish visiting all the Web sites advertised on Sunday's Super Bowl XXXIV until Super Bowl XXXV.

Those handicapping Bowl advertisers would have declared before the game, say, Pepsi to be an erratic competitor, capable of moments of sheer brilliance, yet equally capable of bone-headed plays. Budweiser is a wily veteran, proven to have an impact in big-game situations, but never count out dark horse FedEx, whose flashes of inspiration catch the competition off guard. And watch out for the special teams of dot-com rookies looking for vindication.

After hacking through a morass of tech company commercials - which eventually canceled one another out, although financial site E-Trade.com was the clear winner among them - the story in Super Bowl XXXIV was the Battle of the Beverages.

My scorecard shows Budweiser the champ, with its spot parodying dog food ads in which a golden retriever waxes eloquent about his owner - ``That's why I only give him Budweiser'' - as well as one with a beer-loving, method-acting pooch and one starring Wayne Gretzky as a designated driver (on a Zamboni, naturally).

Mountain Dew scored with funny bits poking fun at Queen's ``Bohemian Rhapsody'' and in which a hyperkinetic bicyclist raced after a cheetah to retrieve his drink. Pepsi One's ads were forgettable, and 7-Up offered a bunch of crass and splashy spots that weren't all that entertaining.

And, yes, Federal Express came through with a big play on ``The Wizard of Oz,'' in which a delivery guy brings a helium supply to Munchkin Land so the Lollipop Guild members can sing in their squeaky, high-pitched voices.

In Tabasco's ``Armageddon'' parody, the offending fireballs were God's errant splashes of Tabasco sauce.

But the wearying number of Web site addresses was the major trend this year. EDS.com had a winner, with its posse of cowboys herding cats, and Onmoney.com's paperwork ogre and Lastminutetravel.com's tornado looked cool.

But the glut of Web site addresses may have overloaded viewers' systems.

Advertisers such as CDW.com, Netpliance.com, epidemic.com, Monster.com, webex.com and Agillion.com offered shrug-inducing spots - what do these sites offer, and is it worth finding out?

On the other hand, Computer.com, Kforce.com, hotjobs.com, autotrader.com, WebMD.com, Microstrategy.com, lifeminders.com and Britannica.com were clear about what they were - all cyber-clearing houses for sundry kinds of information - but their spots weren't terribly inspired.

Other high-tech advertisers fared better. Two commercials that ran back to back, for E-Trade and Motorola, riffed on the same joke - a guy using new technology to instantly dump stock - though E-Trade did it better.

Its spot featured a guy watching, slack-jawed, a commercial for ``Blow'd Up,'' a chunk of big-budget Hollywood shlock, before dumping his stock in the studio; Motorola's focused on a vermin-infested doughnut shop.

Another E-Trade spot featuring a medical skit - ``He's got money coming out of the wazoo'' - and one mocking Bowl commercial hoopla and the high price of advertising were also winners.

In the latter, a chimp, an old guy and a goof sit and clap aimlessly, followed by the title card, ``Well, we just wasted 2 million bucks.'' Which sort of summed up the day for E-advertisers.

Motorola's other spots - including a guy in the wilderness using his phone with an Internet hook-up to discover whether the snake attacking him was poisonous and an opera soprano ending a cell phone call with her spear - were all acceptably, if not memorably, clever.

(Later spots for movies called ``Pitch Black'' and ``U-571'' looked like more parodies on the order of ``Blow'd Up,'' but those films, alas, are real.)

Two other dot-com spots airing back-to-back offered an interesting juxtaposition in their portrayal of women - Oxygen.com, for the new cable network, celebrated female self-empowerment; Ourbeginning.com depicted a coterie of bickering brides as shrill harpies.

Mini-trend: Animals driving vehicles. An elephant made off with a truck filled with Payday candy bars, while a school of dolphins cruised to the amusement park Discovery Cove in a convertible.

And the sock-puppet spokesthing for Pets.com - whose motto is, in fact, ``Because pets can't drive'' - didn't drive, but he sure pestered poor shnooks who do.

ABC even contributed a clever series of spots, inserting ``Who Wants to Be a Millionaire'' host Regis Philbin into shows like ``Dharma & Greg'' and ``NYPD Blue'' - the way Regis is dominating that network, it's not that far-fetched a scenario.

Nuveen Investments offered the most surprising image - Christopher Reeve walking once again (thanks to computer imagery) - but didn't turn it into a coherent ad. The Charles W. Schwab investment firm offered a series of mildly amusing commercials featuring celebrities from Ringo Starr to Charles Barkley and Mike Ditka.

Ditka hit a new low - after his coaching tenure at New Orleans, that's saying something - with his spot for the video release of ``Runaway Bride.''

But perhaps the worst spot was the bloated piece of propaganda from the European Ministry of Tourism viciously mocking America's obscene craving for excess - oh, wait, that was the halftime show.

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Photo: (color) The monkey dances for E-Trade.com