Yup very normal. When I first joined I got 3 other friends to join up with me and we just randomly chose a conference. All of the teams in the conference were totally foreign to all of us.
But now they're our greatest love of all!
You can move up to D2 after your first season. Moving to D1 will take a few more seasons after that. Getting to high major D1 will take quite awhile though. But I like D3, I think it's a lot of fun.
Hope you enjoy the game and post questions on the forum. Read the guides too, they're really helpful.