Sometimes, adversaries have to come together to defeat a common foe. Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez did it last year for the New York Yankees.

Unfortunately for the men in pinstripes, the superstar tag team failed to bring any hardware to the Big Apple.

Today and tomorrow, Penn State women's track and field will try the same strategy, shoving aside any bad blood with Big Ten rivals Minnesota and Wisconsin to team up and represent the Big Ten Conference in the Big Ten/SEC Challenge at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

The Big Ten will face off against two of the best programs in the nation. Tennessee and South Carolina, ranked No. 1 and 7, respectively, by Trackwire.com, will join Kentucky to represent the SEC.

This meet will be unlike a typical meet because the teams will earn a conference score, rather than an individual team score. The idea intrigued Penn State coach Beth Alford-Sullivan.

"It's a great concept," she said. "It's really fun to see two great conferences in our sport of track and field go head-to-head and see what happens with it."

While it will be strange for the Nittany Lions to fight on the same side as the Badgers and Golden Gophers, it will take a total team effort to defeat the SEC, the nation's premier track conference, boasting five teams in the Trackwire top 25. The Big Ten only has one team in the top 25, Michigan.

Tennessee, which finished as national champions during the indoor season, will provide the greatest competition.

"The Tennessee sprint corps is really impressive," Alford-Sullivan said, acknowledging the fact that freshman sprinter Courtney Champion and senior distance runner Nicole Cook, only two of the 17 indoor season All-Americans, will lead the Lady Volunteers.

"They've got a lot of talent across the board and we look forward to seeing them. We'll do our best against them," Alford-Sullivan said.

Penn State is coming off a difficult, yet productive weekend during which it smoked non-conference opponents in driving rain at the Jim Thorpe Invitational. During that meet, the Lions saw some strong performances from high jumpers Megan Burke and Heather Yedinak, and pole-vaulter Kelly Nesbit.

Penn State will couple the momentum from the field events with the slated return of freshman sprinter Shana Cox and senior distance captain Molly Landreth. Cox has been resting during the preliminary weeks of the season, and Landreth will be returning after sitting out during the indoor season. Senior throws captain Kate Johnston will also resume competition after being held out of last weekend's competition to prevent a weather-related injury.

The return of the three will give Penn State a full-strength roster for the competition.

"We're bringing people from all the disciplines," Alford-Sullivan said. "We're looking forward to having some good results."

Once Penn State acquaints itself with its temporary teammates this weekend, the Penn State skipper is looking for a heated, yet very entertaining, battle between the two conferences.

"It's going to be kind of weird to come together and kind of work toward the common good," Alford-Sullivan said. "I hope these schools enjoy it, and that we pull it off, and we'll see how the conference stacks up."

But once this weekend is over, consider the Big Ten alliance finished.