Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig stanford.edu. NS
Answer
stanford.edu. 1 NS atalante.stanford.edu.
stanford.edu. 1 NS ns7.dnsmadeeasy.com.
stanford.edu. 1 NS ns5.dnsmadeeasy.com.
stanford.edu. 1 NS ns6.dnsmadeeasy.com.
stanford.edu. 1 NS argus.stanford.edu.
stanford.edu. 1 NS avallone.stanford.edu.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
ns5.dnsmadeeasy.com. 3 A 208.94.148.13
ns6.dnsmadeeasy.com. 3 A 208.80.124.13
ns7.dnsmadeeasy.com. 3 A 208.80.126.13
argus.stanford.edu. 1 A 171.64.7.115
atalante.stanford.edu. 1 A 171.64.7.61
avallone.stanford.edu. 1 A 171.64.7.88
ns5.dnsmadeeasy.com. 3 AAAA 2600:1800:5:0:0:0:0:1
ns6.dnsmadeeasy.com. 3 AAAA 2600:1801:6:0:0:0:0:1
ns7.dnsmadeeasy.com. 3 AAAA 2600:1802:7:0:0:0:0:1
argus.stanford.edu. 1 AAAA 2607:f6d0:0:9113:0:0:ab40:773
atalante.stanford.edu. 1 AAAA 2607:f6d0:0:d32:0:0:ab40:73d
avallone.stanford.edu. 1 AAAA 2607:f6d0:0:9116:0:0:ab40:758
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0