Foundation students covering graduate game (8)
I believe the answer is:
baseball
'game' is the definition.
(baseball is a kind of game)
'foundation students covering graduate' is the wordplay.
'foundation' becomes 'base' ('base' can be a synonym of 'foundation'**).
'students' becomes 'll'.
'covering' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'graduate' becomes 'ba'.
'base'+'ll'='basell'
'basell' placed around 'ba' is 'BASEBALL'.
(Other definitions for baseball that I've seen before include "Popular American sport" , "Game played in sable alb?" , "Game played in a strangely able labs" , "US/Canadian game" , "US game" .)