Buono has free agents the way a dog has fleas. With a finite number of dollars under the salary cap, Buono can only scratch so many itches at once. Several others must go as well. But Dickenson's won't be the only familiar name missing in this fall's edition of the Stampeders. That's what salary caps do.
Players become stars, they want more money.
With a limited number of dollars to spread around, you can't make them all happy. So your best players leave and you start again. That financial straitjacket has helped save the CFL from itself in the past decade. There's no doubt the National Hockey League and major-league baseball are prepared to shut down their operations for a long time in order to get salary caps next time around. They say it's the only way to control player costs in 30-team leagues.