1. "for the players" You hit on the distinction better than I was able to. The distinction is that a procedure for the officials was not followed. It has nothing to do with the action of the players.
2. No, that's subjective. The umpire has to decide whether the batter steps on the base before the fielder catches the ball. It's not a matter of counting or following a series of steps laid out in the rule book outside the actual game play. If you can't distinguish between a bang-bang play at first and whether a team should get an extra challenge after the game is over, that's on you.
3. No, the continuous action thing was a talking point on here and an excuse by Tucci after the fact, but the rule is clear, and that's why this was overturned. Listen to the Koll interview on flo. They were expecting a tougher case, but the USA wrestling expert witness ended up backing up their entire case (presumably against the expectation of USA wrestling who were representing Zain). The brick must be thrown 5 seconds after points go on the board. The sequence continues and after it ends they go back and review the situation, but not unless the brick was thrown on time during the situation. As soon as the points went on the board, the coaches were on the clock, and that clock expired 9 times over. That is a failure to follow the correct procedures of review, not a judgement call on the mat (like the actual sequence being reviewed).
4. No, it certainly did not step outside of the process. Cornell followed an established USOC procedure for protesting a result through arbitration. Despite what many of the posters on here are acting like, this has happened before across many sports, and has happened multiple times in our own sport. This was by the book.