The dusty footprints Tony Barbee left in his path as he strolled to the dais Thursday were proof enough.

The odor of fresh paint, the workers with construction hats atop their heads and the brand new, expensive scoreboard shining behind him merely added to the scenery that ultimately sold Barbee on Auburn.

Barbee wouldn’t go as far to say that the $92.5 million Auburn Arena was the top drawing point for him to leave UTEP for a place he’d never been in his life before Thursday, but the pricy commitment exemplified to him just how serious his new employer is about basketball.

“It became recognizable very soon that not only I could build a team, but be able to sustain a program,” Barbee said Thursday at his introductory press conference, which included an audience of reporters, players, other Auburn coaches and prominent boosters.

“The commitment is serious.”

Athletic director Jay Jacobs’ commitment will go beyond the building in which his new coach will report to work every day. It’ll make an impact in Barbee’s bank account, too.

Barbee will make $1.5 million annually — a 500 percent raise from what he made at UTEP — over the next six years, according to the letter of agreement he signed Wednesday night. The contract has the potential to be heavy on achievement-based incentives, just like Gene Chizik’s.

It’s uncertain whether Barbee or Auburn will handle the $300,000 buyout owed to UTEP, which is now in search of a coach who can sustain a strong four-year run that put the Miners back on the map and into the NCAA Tournament.

Barbee will make close to double the salary Jeff Lebo made in his final season with the Tigers and he is now the fifth-highest paid coach in the SEC.

“I think he deserves it and I think he’s going to earn his living,” Jacobs said. “It’s the right thing for Auburn, it’s the right thing for this team.”

With the help of senior associate athletic director Bernard Hill, who compiled a list of candidates for him to parse through, and advice from former top player Charles Barkley and former SEC coach Eddie Fogler, Jacobs met with a number of candidates at undisclosed locations in Atlanta. He met with Barbee, who wrapped up his career at UTEP with an NCAA Tournament first-round loss to Butler last Thursday, on Tuesday and Wednesday.

The second meeting wasn’t a part of the interview process. It was where Jacobs offered Barbee the job.

“The first few minutes of the interview — it was unbelievable,” Jacobs said. “You knew he was the right guy, the right fit for this basketball team.”

For close to 30 minutes, Barbee spoke about Auburn’s basketball history, his commitment to winning, his relationship with his mentor, Kentucky coach John Calipari, and his recruiting philosophy, among many other talking points. Every 5 minutes or so, Barbee would divert from the question, focus on the people who will fill the new Auburn Arena when the season tips off in eight months and deliver an applause-inducing message.

“I’m challenging our fan base, I’m challenging our students. We need you. You are a part of this program,” Barbee said. “You’re not separate from it. You are a part of it.

“You have a direct impact on the outcome of games in this arena, and I need each and every one of you there every night because there is not going to be a harder working coach, a harder working staff or a harder working group of young men that are going to do it the right way.”

At a similar-sized arena to Beard-Eaves-Memorial Coliseum, UTEP averaged nearly 8,700 fans per game. In Lebo’s final season, Auburn averaged 6,286 — a figure that drops slightly when you exclude a sellout against Kentucky in front of thousands of Wildcat fans.

Barbee frequently mentioned that he is inheriting a team that had a “disconnect” with its fanbase. He’s looking to fix it quickly.

“My job is to rekindle that love affair,” Barbee said. “I have to be a presence in this community. I’ve got to be a presence in this state. I’ve got to be a presence throughout the Southeast and I’ve got to be a presence with the students. They’ve got to understand that we’re in this together.”

His first step toward rallying the masses? Going after his mentor, who currently coaches one of the best basketball teams in the country at Kentucky.

Barbee was recruited by Calipari, played for him for four years at UMass, learned how to recruit with him as a graduate assistant, thrived as one of the nation’s top recruiters alongside him at Memphis and then coached against him during his first three years at UTEP.

Barbee said Calipari called him early Thursday — on the same day Kentucky would face Cornell in the Sweet 16 — to wish him luck.

“I’m not backing down from him, he’s not backing down from me,” Barbee said. “There’s one way you get to the top: You go after the people that are at the top, and right now that’s where Kentucky sits.”

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