Dropping athletics has hurt BYU athletically. So, that's the context to why this was even being brought up.
Sure, it could be argued that BYU-I should have sports but the reason this was being discussed was that "dropping sports" negatively affected BYU athletics.
I don't think it would have mattered much due to the changes in what JC football is, now, in regards to a pipeline to D1. The original post seemed to also be forgetting that the change to 4 year school would have broken that pipeline, anyway, if BYU-I had kept sports.