Along with George Reed and Johnny Bright, Pringle is one of the players most often mentioned as being the greatest running back in CFL history.

In November 2006, Pringle was voted one of the CFL's Top 50 players (#4) of the league's modern era by Canadian sports network TSN.

In three games, Pringle received 22 carries for 129 yards, posting a respectable rushing average in limited action.

They opted to stick with their trio of Canadian ball carriers in Michael Soles, Blake Marshall and Brian Walling.

In Sacramento, Pringle became an everyday player, although not a frequent option in the ground game that was led by former NFL running back Mike Oliphant.

Still he racked up 366 yards and four touchdowns in his only season with the Gold Miners, before being traded in the offseason to the team where he would make his most lasting mark, the then-Baltimore Football Club, later to become the Baltimore Stallions.

His rushing totals declined to a "mere" 1,791 yards, and while his yards-per-carry fell by .6 from 6.4 to 5.8, his statistics were still the best any back posted in the CFL that year.

The Denver Broncos signed Pringle to a free agent contract for the 1996 NFL season, but he was a late cut from training camp.

With no other NFL teams expressing interest in his abilities, Pringle returned to the CFL, following the relocated Baltimore franchise and joining the newly christened Montreal Alouettes late in the season.

With the Alouettes lacking in playoff success and their attendance at Olympic Stadium flagging, Pringle was one of the team's few bright spots in a disappointing year.

But for the 1998 season, the Als moved permanently to the smaller Percival Molson Stadium, where they regularly drew sell-out crowds.

Pringle ran for only nine touchdowns but nobody in the league much cared: the story was his 2,065 rushing yards that year, a CFL record by a considerable margin.

Pringle had run for 522 yards in his last four playoff games over two seasons, but a disappointing East Division final exit to the eventual champion Hamilton Tiger-Cats had Alouettes fans confused and angry.

Pringle, incensed at the treatment, left the Alouettes bitterly at the end of the season, signing with the team he had broken in with: the Edmonton Eskimos.

However, head coach Danny Maciocia called a quarterback sneak that resulted in a score, meaning that Pringle finished the season tied with Reed.

Pringle was publicly upset with his head coach, and the controversy may have affected the Eskimos in their playoff loss to the Saskatchewan Roughriders.