STANFORD, Calif. — For most major college football programs, summer is a time for players to load up on classes and concentrate on conditioning for the upcoming season.

Not at Stanford.

Cardinal players are cashing in on a one-of-a-kind resource run by the football office. About 50 to 70 work as paid interns in the offseason as part of The 12th Man Summer Jobs Program, which connects players with employers.

Players land jobs throughout Silicon Valley in everything from technology startups, law firms, venture capital firms, banks, medical research, insurance agencies and hotels to tutoring services and public policy work. The program helps players afford to stay near campus so they can participate in voluntary offseason workouts.

“Everybody’s doing some pretty cool things. And everybody’s pretty busy,” said wide receiver Jordan Pratt, who is working with an investment management firm this summer after two previous internships in energy and engineering. “There’s a good chunk of guys wearing dress clothes as they’re running into the locker room trying to make the lifting session or the run.”

The internship program has been going on for decades at Stanford but has become more structured and more widely used in recent years.

Part of the reason the program has flourished is the university’s proximity to Silicon Valley’s many companies. Stanford also has been more aggressive about transforming its tough admissions standard from a burden to a benefit, a recruiting strategy that started under former coach Jim Harbaugh and has been carried on and eclipsed by David Shaw and his staff.

Stanford director of football operations Matt Doyle, who oversees the jobs program, meets with players individually a few weeks after the season ends each January.

He talks to them about what work they’ve done and what work they want to do before coaching them through the resume-writing process.

All the while, Doyle is a de facto headhunter who is in contact with companies seeking summer interns. By the end of spring practices, players are going through interviews. They all have jobs by June.

Doyle specifies strict guidelines to employers to make sure they comply with NCAA rules: players must make the same amount of money as other interns (typically $10 to $20 an hour), they can’t get paid for work not performed and they can’t get the job simply because they’re a Stanford football player.

“They have to go through the wringer just like everybody else,” Doyle said.