Hehehe. Ok, fair enough. I agree it is cool.
But really: imagine a friend or a family member who never really listened to podcast, but read about a nice one in the newspaper. They happen to have installed AntennaPod for that. How would their journey to/through Invidious look like?
(I’m thinking of my father, in his 60s, and there’s no way he would find out about any of this on his own. He would search for podcasts in AntennaPod, using the title in the newspaper, and start listening. Even though he has installed and uses the YouTube app, he wouldn’t connect the two.)
In other words: you and I are niche. We know (more or less) what we’re doing and we’re engaged in open source projects. Remember AntennaPod has many ‘regular’ users (who are no power listeners). From that general audience there’s only a subset (aka niche) that would be interested in following YouTube as a podcast (I think I wouldn’t - there is plenty of original podcast content out there).
My main point in reference to the current core team, was not about ‘scratching your own back’ or not (the current lead developer has implemented stuff they don’t really care for personally in the past and they’ll probably do it again).
The point was about our understanding of and agreement with the keeping-it-simple principle. And the solution you propose is not that, IMHO 
Well, in all fairness: their project is all about YouTube. Our project is about decentralised podcasts (and YouTube is not decentralised). I get where you’re coming from, but from where I stand it would be weird to expect AntennaPod to put aside its core principles for a bit to be able to integrate with another project. Like, why would we engage in a match of table tennis when badminton is our sport?
See also the discussion that took place about integration with Spotify - some arguments overlap.
Again: not saying AntennaPod cannot have support for what you want (YouTube channels as podcasts). Just not in the way you propose.
PS. Did you know that you already can subscribe to YouTube channels in AntennaPod? And a next version of AntennaPod will make it easier to ignore video and play audio only.