Al Michaels and John Madden don't have the potential of getting shot at while providing commentary during an NFL game. There's a big difference between what they're doing and what an embed reporter does.
Moreover if you hold the lives of journalists so sacred, the DOD could have kept all of them out of the coalition sandbox for their own individual safety . However, they permitted journalists into the field under their rules so that most of them should live to the end of the war.
To date, five non-embedded journalists have been killed in combat. Three journalists were held as POWs by the Iraqis and released and four journalists were found illegally behind coalition lines by MPs and detained. The battlefield is a very dangerous place for soldiers yet journalists regulary ignore this fact at their peril.