Did you know the CCK Link field can accept tokens in the link title? I didn't. Now the link module provides all kinds of ways to format the combination of url + title that get entered, but when asked to have the actual node title link to the given url - I thought for sure I would have to resort to writing some code, either in template.php or in a tpl file.

But the Link module and Token module together made it easy. Set the Title to "static title" - this way the user will never be prompted when creating a node, and remember this is the link title, not the node title. Then set it to the token [title-raw] and you're done! CCK and possibly Views will all work together to get you something like <a href="[user entered url]">[node title]</a>!