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

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.