I'm sure it's partially true that US won a ton of GSTs because they had the best PCs the fastest and because GSTs were hosted monthly
When stronger teams like Mother came around it became harder, but also a lot of US members lost interest in sparring so that was probably the bigger problem
Another issue is the fact that US is not like every other guild that just recruits people on the spot for a chance at competing in the GST

even so, no PC team would ever be able to beat a full US team if everyone got together and cared to win

Prado, Ares, Deo, Highlander?, David, Rufus, Crono, Shannon, Trip, Squirt, myself
Brett is IMO the best sparrer of all-time and he never even played iClassic, so throw him in there as a possibility
with those people, our 2 subs would probably be better than the best 2 on other teams, WTF kind of GST team has to consider subbing David or something

you'd have better luck beating Tortoise's full-on godmode in a Babylon weekly tournament hosted by Sephiroth

uh, no
US was around long before newbies like Charlie even knew how to set his coat color so I can't see how it was ever just a flavor
it was always an extremely relevant and consistent guild, Rufus just took it in a different direction with a different group of players

that group of players stays together because we've known each other forever through sparring and have mutual respect for one another, we play other games, we Skype, etc.

the guild seemed to have of every really good sparrer from the 2004-2007ish sparring era except Halo and Neo
I hate when people dillute or dumb down "PC sparring" or "PC Graal" to this small window of time when UN was the only server because, TBH, that's when sparring was at its worst

US was strong even when Morgoth was the leader and it was probably successful on UN (I'm just guessing because I had quit by that time) because it was passed on to someone that isn't an asshole, doesn't have an overwhelming ego, and is generally good at leading and organizing things

and Brett was never in a single GST, so he didn't carry a damn thing
no one ever carried US, everyone just sparred and cooperated and won