Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig sparklight.net. NS
Answer
sparklight.net. 5 NS ns3.cableone.net.
sparklight.net. 5 NS ns1.cableone.net.
sparklight.net. 5 NS ns2.cableone.net.
sparklight.net. 5 NS ns4.cableone.net.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0