Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig gci.net. NS
Answer
gci.net. 4 NS a1-235.akam.net.
gci.net. 4 NS vans-1.gci.net.
gci.net. 4 NS vans-2.gci.net.
gci.net. 4 NS a3-64.akam.net.
gci.net. 4 NS a2-65.akam.net.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
vans-1.gci.net. 4 A 209.165.131.14
vans-2.gci.net. 4 A 209.165.131.15
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0