What would it take for rowing to take off in the US?

For ever major sport to somehow fail.

I know UofL has sunk a decent amount of money into their rowing program (their rowing center down on the river was around 2-3 million to build) and it took donations from Brown-Forman to get it done because of lack of athletic funding for the program. That's not including money they put into the program when it was adopted about 10-15 years ago. And that's with the convenience of being located on a major body of water to practice on (Ohio River).

If you want a decent program it's pretty expensive and would depend on some significant private donations which a lot of schools don't have outside of football/basketball.

Global warming to flood the country.

they would have to use yaks to draw interest in the south... not those stupid long arse viking lookin row boats

Alligators and sharks in the water

For every male's testicles to fall off.

Start allowing them to ram each other with the boats and encourage using the ore as a jousting stick.