Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig gridiron-games.com. NS
Answer
gridiron-games.com. 1 NS ns1.gridiron-games.com.
gridiron-games.com. 1 NS ns2.gridiron-games.com.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
ns1.gridiron-games.com. 1 A 98.126.201.146
ns2.gridiron-games.com. 1 A 98.126.201.150
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0