Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig ucsd.edu. NS
Answer
ucsd.edu. 4 NS ns-auth2.ucsd.edu.
ucsd.edu. 4 NS ns-auth3.ucsd.edu.
ucsd.edu. 4 NS ns-auth1.ucsd.edu.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
ns-auth1.ucsd.edu. 4 A 44.227.162.249
ns-auth2.ucsd.edu. 4 A 132.239.252.172
ns-auth3.ucsd.edu. 4 A 132.239.252.186
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0