Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig award-plaques.net. NS
Answer
award-plaques.net. 4 NS ns-468.awsdns-58.com.
award-plaques.net. 4 NS ns-337.awsdns-42.com.
award-plaques.net. 4 NS ns-309.awsdns-38.com.
award-plaques.net. 4 NS ns-1699.awsdns-20.co.uk.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0