Mike Aresco puts it on the record:
https://247sports.com/college/east-carol...156047011/
“We decided as a conference office that essentially the word would be man up and make a statement in admitting we were wrong,” Aresco said on Pirate Radio. “If you look at the video, it was ruled a fumble on the field and the ball was never really regained by the (ball-carrier). So we felt we had to do that. It’s unfortunate. There were a couple of other calls in that game that went against ECU. It was tough in that last drive, a couple ways they could’ve potentially won the game. You feel bad when that happens, but again, the game is over, and not much you can do. But as a conference, we should point out that’s how we felt.”
Aresco was asked if the replay official from the Tulsa game was let go or faced any punishment, but he would not address that situation.
“We don’t get into that, but we have processes to go through that,” Aresco said. “We hold our officials accountable, we absolutely do. We took a hard look at that one and took the appropriate steps. It was an issue we definitely dealt with.
“I watched it live and I watched a number of replays. We don’t usually issue a statement. In fact, in the almost nine years I’ve been doing this, not sure if we’ve even issued any statements or even had to. But in this case, we felt like it was an egregious situation because it was not a judgement call. We don’t talk about those, they happen. But we were concerned on that one because indisputable video evidence is the standard and consequently, we thought in this particular case it was pretty clear and pretty evident (they didn’t follow that guideline).”