Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig bulldogperformance.net. NS
Answer
bulldogperformance.net. 5 NS ns-1300.awsdns-34.org.
bulldogperformance.net. 5 NS ns-877.awsdns-45.net.
bulldogperformance.net. 5 NS ns-280.awsdns-35.com.
bulldogperformance.net. 5 NS ns-532.awsdns-02.net.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0