Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig hspheredns.com. NS
Answer
hspheredns.com. 5 NS ns2.hspheredns.com.
hspheredns.com. 5 NS ns1.hspheredns.com.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
ns1.hspheredns.com. 5 A 67.22.132.251
ns2.hspheredns.com. 5 A 208.77.156.251
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0